Connections
by Manic Penguin
Summary: An extended and shippified, Sparky, novalization of INTRUDER. First comes JohnElizabeth UST, and then comes the fun that is JohnElizabeth RST. This is now the TEEN version of this story.
1. Chapter 1

_**CONNECTIONS**_

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_An epic story that starts in Atlantis after THE SEIGE episodes end and spans INTRUDER, putting the events of that episode into a lengthened, shippified, and detailed novalization of the events... I hope. I expanded the crossover with SG-1 to include everyone, so if you don't know who people are let me know and I'll put a synapsis in the next chapter for each character not normally seen on Atlantis._

_This story is, at its heart, a romance between John and ELizabeth (Sheir, Sparky, whatever you choose to call it) with a tiny spattering of Sam/Daniel (SG-1 characters) on the side, but, nothing overly overt._

_This story is rated M, but there are some parts that are rated higher that will not be posted on this site. If you want to read the story with **EVERYTHING **included, go to my site (link in my profile). I'll post a link later when I get the page online, as it's currently under constrcution._

**DISCLAIMER: I OWN NOTHING. I DON'T EVEN OWN THE DVD'S FOR STARGATE: ATLANTIS YET. I DO, HOWEVER, OFTEN HAVE TO AVOID WALKING MY DOG, LINDEN, IN CERTAIN FOREST-Y AREAS BECAUSE OF FILMING FOR BOTH STARGATE SHOWS. A BIT ANNOYING, REALLY, THOUGH GETTING THAT CLOSE TO JOE FLANNIGAN AND MICHAEL SHANKS IS ALWAYS FUN. ANYWAY, FOR THE RECORD, I OWN NOTHING AND AM ONLY USING THE CHARACTERS IN THE FOLLOWING WORK OF FICTION AS AN HOMAGE TO THE BRILLIANCE OF THOSE WHO DO OWN THE STARGATE FRANCHISE. AND, OF COURSE, BECAUSE I LIKED TO PLAY WITH THE CHARACTERS THAT THEY HAVE SO BEAUTIFULLY CREATED AND WHO ARE BROUGHT TO LIFE BY AMAZING ACTORS. THIS CONCLUDES MY DISCLAIMER.**

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CHAPTER ONE

* * *

They had confirmed, as best they could, that the Wraith truly believed that Atlantis was gone, and Rodney and Zelenka had made sure that the cloaking device was still working. For the moment it seemed like Atlantis was safe from the Wraith.

The **Daedalus** had already started on its way back, the eighteen day journey having begun as soon as the ship was ready to make it all the way back to the Milky Way, and John and Elizabeth were busy assembling the files that they needed to bring back to Earth with them while Rodney and the other scientists worked feverishly to identify as many artefacts as possible before Rodney, Elizabeth, John, and Carson went back to Earth to report to the SGC and bring back increased staff in every department.

"I thought we sent all this stuff in that burst transmission a few weeks ago, the one with the letters and everything," John complained as he loaded a large shipping crate with files that he was sure Elizabeth had already sent to Earth in data stream form.

"Most of it was, but Colonel Carter sent a message with the troops. Apparently some of the data was somehow corrupted. All our personal messages were fine and were passed along after checking to make sure that no one let anything classified slip—Zelenka's was destroyed, and one of the Botanists' message had to be edited a little in the middle—but some of the actual files, especially mission reports, were incomplete or garbled in some way. Colonel Carter thinks it might have something to do with the compression program we used and the program that they used to open the files… I didn't quite follow, to be honest. Unfortunately, since she wasn't specific about which files were messed up, we've got to bring them all."

John cursed before getting to his feet, his back cracking loudly as he stretched his arms over his head. "That is not normal," Elizabeth frowned, cringing at the sound.

"A couple of hard landings and a pretty bad crash… I'm lucky this is all I have to deal with," John said.

"What did you fly?" Elizabeth asked.

"You've read my file," John replied.

Elizabeth smiled softly. "Not recently—your Earth file at least. I started new files for everyone here when we got here—that file I end up reading a lot, usually while you're recovering from something in the Infirmary," she said. "Plus I was never really all that good with the names of military machinery. I remember there being a lot of birds listed in your file, but my mind sees the name of a bird and a picture of an animal pops into my head."

"And that right there is where you and I differ," John said.

"I'm not disputing that," Elizabeth said. "So, what did you fly?"

John flopped down on the floor, his head resting on his jacket that he had discarded almost two hours earlier. "Everything they'd let me," he said. "Mostly helos; Osprey, Blackhawk, Apache, Cobra, those four were my main rides. But I'm qualified for F-14's, F-18's, most commercial planes, and, my personal favourite, my Stearman. It doesn't go as fast but it's the first plane I ever flew, and it's the only thing that my dad and I ever bonded over."

"Stearman… I don't think I know that model," Elizabeth confessed.

"I didn't figure you would. Open-cockpit bi-plane. I've got a fully restored one, the only thing my father was good for, he restored it and I got it when he died, but since I haven't been in the States for the past six years, except for my brief stay in Colorado before coming here, she probably needs some work," John said.

"Well, we're getting some time off, maybe you can visit… her," Elizabeth said, frowning at the 'her' even as she said it.

Rolling his eyes, John sighed. "It's perfectly normal for pilots to name their planes after the women in their life."

"I'm sure it is," Elizabeth said innocently. "So… what's your plane's name?"

"**Samantha**," John said with a smile.

"After… your girlfriend?"

"Nah. I decided a while back that girlfriends come and go, and it'd suck having to rename my plane every time I met someone new," John said.

"So… who is Samantha?"

John was about to respond when McKay came bursting into the office with a stack of files and a harried expression on his face. " Elizabeth, these won't fit with all the artefacts that we've been requested to bring back, can you find a place to squeeze them in with your files?" the astrophysicist said, out of breath and covered in rivulets of rather dirty sweat.

"Uh… John? How much room is left in that crate?" Elizabeth asked.

"Put them on the chair. I'll make sure they get in… somehow," John promised. He looked over at Elizabeth. "We've been doing this for five hours. I haven't eaten for two days and that was a wilted salad-like-thing that I still don't think is food on the grounds that it was vibrant neon pink with orange stripes, though Teyla says it's got almost everything that Beckett told her we need in our diets. I've reached a point where your laptop is literally turning into a giant cartoon steak with butter-smothered green beans and a scoop of mashed potatoes."

"I hardly think your situation has become that dire, but you are right, we have been at this for a while," Elizabeth said, her eyes flicking to her watch, though it was probably not accurate given that it was unlikely that the planet they were on had a twenty-four hour day—none of the scientists had been able to accurately determine how long one day was, though, to be fair, they had had their hands full with other more important matters since arriving in their new home. "How much more time do you need, Rodney?" she asked.

Rodney thought about it for a moment before answering. "A few hours, a day at most. Zelenka has some calculations pending that should be included, and there's a device from M7Y-396 that still has to complete the final quarantine stages before it can go anywhere. Other than that my department is good to go," McKay said.

"And you've got the suggested personnel lists for sub-sectors that you're not actively involved in?" Elizabeth asked.

"Still waiting for xenobiology to give me their list, but it's a pretty small pool to pick from so if need be I can just go over the files that the SGC has on hand," Rodney said. "Anyone in that field that they could request is probably stationed either at Area 51 or the SGC itself."

"Good," Elizabeth said. "Now, and I mean this in the kindest way possible, please go take a shower before someone tosses you off the balcony into the ocean."

Rodney frowned. "Excuse me?"

"She's saying you stink, McKay, and I have to agree with her," John said bluntly. Rodney looked over at Elizabeth who made a face that told him that she really hadn't wanted to say anything but that she agreed with Sheppard, and, with an offended cry, Rodney threw his arms up in the air and turned around, stalking away, heading for the nearest shower Elizabeth hoped.

After making sure Rodney's artefacts were in the crate, John looked over at Elizabeth. "So… day after tomorrow we head for home." He frowned, not liking the way that sounded, though he couldn't put his finger on why.

"Day after tomorrow sounds good," Elizabeth agreed. "But we're not going home," she corrected.

Immediately understanding what she meant, John nodded, smiling softly. "You're right. This is home now," he said softly. He stood up and dusted off his pants quickly. "Lunch?" he said, motioning toward the door.

"I promise not to force anything pink and orange on you," Elizabeth smiled.

"Ugg, don't remind me," Sheppard said, shuddering dramatically as he placed a gentle hand on the small of Elizabeth's back, unconsciously leading her out of her office and toward the corridor that would lead them to the Mess. "I don't care that this is another galaxy. Nothing that looks like that stuff should be allowed to be called food."

* * *

The rest of that day was spent finishing up mission reports and gathering letters and messages for people back home—they had all sent their videos a few weeks earlier, but the general tone of those messages had been fatalistic at best and the majority of the staff wanted to give their loved ones a more upbeat message now that they were out of the immediate woods regarding the Wraith. 

John and Elizabeth had little else to do once they had packed up the files and gathered the messages, so they spent their last day on Atlantis before returning to Earth wandering around the city and bothering people who had more than enough work to do.

Carson spent the day going over patient care instructions with Doctor Biro and those with medical qualifications, the wounded from the Wraith attack on Atlantis still convalescing in the Infirmary, some in need of constant monitoring; he had tried valiantly to use that as a reason to stay on Atlantis, if only so that he wouldn't have to go through the Stargate more than absolutely necessary, but Elizabeth had been firm in her decision that all of the Senior Staff return to Earth.

And Rodney spent the day working, unwilling to admit that a great many of the scientists on his staff could, would, and had done most if not all of the tasks that he undertook, determined that he was the only one who could make sure that Atlantis remained safe until his return which, if things went according to schedule, wouldn't be for at least a month, probably longer.

Late that night the four Senior Staffers all found themselves raiding the kitchen, unable to sleep in anticipation of what they were going to do the next morning.

Elizabeth, wearing a tank top and a pair of well-worn sweatpants with the word GEORGETOWN printed in cracked lettering down the left leg, remnants of her tenure as a professor, was the first to arrive. Her goal was a cup of tea, the good stuff from back home, not the Athosian tea that Teyla still drank every morning to prepare herself for the day. She was tapping her toes on the floor, making her bunny slippers dance, while waiting for the camomile tea to saturate the hot water she'd poured over it, when she heard someone clattering through the Mess Hall, heading to the kitchen.

Not surprisingly Rodney stumbled in next, a coffee cup clutched in his left hand, still dressed in his uniform, his lab coat that he so rarely wore showing signs that it had been set on fire very recently, possibly only minutes earlier judging by the faintly smoky smell that Elizabeth caught as the exhausted astrophysicist brushed past her in his single-minded pursuit of his beloved caffeine.

John arrived shortly after Rodney, barefoot, a pair of track pants resting low on his hips, a sweatshirt half-zipped up over his bare chest. His plan had been to hit the gym to try to work off some of the excess energy he seemed to have, but he had been halfway to the gym when he realized he wasn't wearing shoes and so he had changed directions, thinking that maybe a snack would help him. If not sleep, then at least focus so that he didn't forget to wear shoes again—the Ancients had been pretty advanced, but they hadn't thought to install heated flooring when they built Atlantis.

Carson was the last to arrive, having come straight from the Infirmary to the mess hall after his shift ended, his evening meal having been scheduled around midnight for the past few months, and the Scot was more than a little surprised to find that the kitchen was rather full when he showed up for his dinner. Though, he did have to admit, he was even more thrown by the attire of his friends—Rodney and his charred clothing wasn't too out of the ordinary, though the fact that the left pocket was still smoking a little was; Sheppard with no shoes was strange, the Major usually being ready for anything, and, in Carson's opinion, that usually meant that shoes were a good thing to put on before leaving your room; and Elizabeth, looking more like a college co-ed than the leader of a scientific and military expedition to another galaxy dressed in her Georgetown Hoyas' sweatpants and matching tank top, not to mention her bunny slippers and bed-tousled ponytail.

"Mass insomnia. Notta good sign," Carson said, trying for cheerful but missing the mark.

"I've drank two full pots of coffee since dinner. I couldn't sleep now if I wanted to," Rodney said, talking faster than normal, something John hadn't thought was possible. "But if I don't continue drinking coffee I'm going to completely crash somewhere around six in the morning, and after I come down off a caffeine high I can sleep for days if I'm not careful."

"I'm just feeling restless, Doc," John assured Carson. "Haven't been off-world in a while; I'm feeling kinda stir crazy. It got worse when someone," he said pointedly, his eyes directed at Elizabeth, "gave me the time to departure right down to the second."

Elizabeth cringed. "Sorry. I do that when I know something big is happening," she said. "Eight hours, twenty-one minutes, forty-seven seconds," she added after glancing quickly at the clock on the wall. John let out a loud groan of frustration and Elizabeth cringed again. "Sorry, John. It's… it's something that's out of my control. I've done it since I was a kid. When my best friend was counting how many sleeps there were until Christmas, I was counting hours, minutes, and seconds, until Christmas morning.

"Why?" Rodney asked.

"We had a ritual at my house. Six o'clock wake up call—that was when my mental clock hit zero. After that it was officially Christmas. Mom and dad going into the kitchen to start breakfast while my brother and I went straight to the tree to see how much the pile had grown overnight. Big pancake breakfast, then we'd all do the dishes together—a very messy operations—and then we'd put the dog outside—he always wanted to help open presents which had been fine until the suede handbag my brother and I saved up to buy my mom was destroyed by doggy drool—and we'd go in the living room and light a fire and open all of our presents in a mad rush because the annoying and typical presents were on the outside—socks, sweaters from Great Aunt Gertrude, stuff that no one asks for and unimaginative relatives buy in bulk to make sure that they have gifts for everyone in the family—and the good gifts, the ones that we'd actually asked for, were buried in deep, but dad had a rule, and there was only one rule, and that was that we work through the presents in layers from the front to the back," Elizabeth said. She shrugged. "I kinda feel like that right now. Like when my mental clock hits zero it'll be Christmas morning."

"Except it won't 'cause when we get to Earth there will be a full and thorough, and probably invasive, physical, followed by several days if not weeks of intense debriefings, followed by your horrible trip to Washington to do the politicking thing," John said.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "First of all, if it weren't for a lot of these people the Stargate program would have been shut down well before Doctor Jackson figured out that it took eight glyphs to dial Pegasus, so, as much as I may not like the way I'll have to be while I'm there, I'm prepared to… do the politicking thing," Elizabeth said, "for the sake of both programs. And second, I'm being forced to Washington for a week or more, and while I'm gone you three get to go on vacation. Carson's already got tickets waiting for him to take him to Scotland to see his mother."

"I do?" Carson frowned as he gathered together the leftovers from dinner to make himself an evening meal.

"You're the only one of the three of us who has family to visit, Carson. The SGC was glad to foot the bill for a return-trip ticket for you to see your mom," Elizabeth smiled. "And you two," she said, turning to John and Rodney, "are going to have full access to anything you want within Cheyenne Mountain. One of their science labs has been emptied out for you, Rodney, and John, there are at least four SG teams that I know of that have offered to take you on as a fourth or fifth if you were interested in going off-world in a different galaxy."

"Cool," John smiled. He had been worried that he would be stuck on base doing absolutely nothing except recruiting new military officers to the Atlantis mission. Well, actually, he was most worried that he would be pulled off the expedition, or that they would send a new military commander to take his place, someone with a higher rank and political friends who could pull the right strings, but he was also worried about being stuck in the SGC with nothing to do.

"Well, I have to say I am certainly looking forward to working closely with Lieutenant Colonel Carter while we are back on Earth," Rodney said, the lascivious tone in his voice making his friends cringe.

Elizabeth shook her head. "Rodney, the woman can not stand to be around you," she said.

"Our relationship is a complex one, I admit, but I hardly think she can't stand me," Rodney said.

"Lieutenant Colonel Carter? Which one is she?" Carson asked.

"SG-1," Elizabeth said.

Carson nodded. "Yea, Rodney, Elizabeth's right. She 'canna stand ya."

Firmly in denial, Rodney shook his head. "She is simply reluctant to allow her true feelings come forth. Emotion in the military is frowned upon, you know, and it's hard for women, especially beautiful blondes," he said, his usual condescending self heightened by the lack of sleep he'd been surviving on for weeks.

"Okay, first of all, cut the sexist crap, Rodney, or you'll join Kavanaugh on the deserted planet I've been promising him," Elizabeth said, "and second, I know that she can't stand you because she told me that she can't stand you. Something about wanting to force a lemon down your throat whenever you open your mouth."

"Ouch," John said with a small smile. He had threatened the scientist with citrus more than once since they met; there was hardly anyone who hadn't, John was sure. "I think I'm gonna like this Colonel Carter," he said.

Elizabeth tensed slightly, but not enough that anyone noticed. "I'm sure you will," she said before throwing out her teabag and making sure she hadn't left any mess behind. "I'm going to try to get some sleep," she said, taking her tea with her as she walked out of the kitchen, though the mess, and into the halls of Atlantis.

* * *

TBC... 

Like it? Hate it? I swear, it gets better once they get to Earth.

Let me know what you think.

Manic Penguin


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

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Though he thought that Elizabeth's sudden departure was strange, Carson was too hungry and tired to investigate further, so he went to the large refrigeration unit—Ancient designed and just as hard to repair as the Electrolux he had had back home, though it kept food fresh much longer—and found his dinner, the plastic wrap over top bearing loopy writing in red Sharpie saying DOCTOR C BECKETT'S PROPERTY – DO NOT TOUCH ON PAIN OF IMMENSELY LARGE NEEDLES IN UNMENTIONABLE PLACES followed by a happy face and the scribbled signature of Sheryl Potter, one of the few people they had brought along on the expedition who was brave enough to volunteer for regular kitchen duty.

Similarly distracted by his own quest for something to put in his stomach—even if his target was liquid rather than food—Rodney started preparing a full carafe of extra strong coffee, something he hadn't been able to indulge himself in since coming to Atlantis because of the rationing of things like coffee.

John, however, had both noticed Elizabeth's abrupt departure and was not otherwise occupied with matters of food and drink. He bid the two doctors a goodnight before heading off in the direction Elizabeth had gone, his bare feet making strange, echoing slapping sounds against the cold floor. He hopped in the first transporter he came across and hit the symbol that would get him within forty feet of Elizabeth's room.

When Elizabeth had selected her quarters she had looked for two things, John remembered: a balcony and a transporter. Since she had been able to select her quarters before the masses started house hunting it hadn't been hard for Elizabeth to find a space that she decided could feel like home, given enough time, and John remembered helping her move her sleeping platform so that the early morning sun—the sun on their new home planet rose in the North and set in the South, or at least what Rodney assured them was North and South—would hit her face should she ever sleep past dawn. John, similarly, had chosen quarters to his specifications, though he had avoided quarters with balconies, preferring to make his home in the inner ring of Atlantis, away from windows and sunlight and things that would distract him from sleeping, which was the only thing he did in his quarters anyway. The transporter stipulation, however, was the same for John. Both he and Elizabeth had practical reasons for the placement of their quarters, easy access to a transporter got them from their beds to the control room or the labs or the Infirmary within seconds of being alerted to a problem, response time often being key to survival.

The transporter let him out in the hallway that Elizabeth's room was off of, and John moved toward her door, coming to a stop outside of it and stopping, wondering, if only for a moment, if what he had thought he saw before she left the kitchen was real or if Elizabeth really had just wanted to try to get some sleep. Ultimately, though, John sided with his initial instincts.

" Elizabeth, open the door," John said, both through the door and over the headset, as he knocked on the door.

"John, I'm trying to get some sleep," Elizabeth replied through the headset, her voice wavering ever so slightly.

"Just open for the door for a second. I need to talk to you," John insisted.

Elizabeth let out a long sigh on the other side of the door. "Give me a second," she said as she moved to the small mirror that hung on her wall. She made sure that she looked alright, that John wouldn't be able to tell that anything was wrong with her, though she was still sure that John would be able to know that there was something wrong with her. He always did.

Once she was sure she was as professional as she could be—bunny slippers and her chosen sleepwear notwithstanding—Elizabeth went back to the door and unlocked it, allowing John to open it from the outside as she moved back to her bed, sitting down on the thin mattress with her arms wrapped around her body in a protective self-hug. "Come in," she called, wishing that, for once, John would have left something that picked at his ever-present white knight complex.

John opened the door and stepped inside her room. He hadn't been in it since he cleared the area when they first arrived on Atlantis, had never had reason to step foot into a place so private and personal, Elizabeth's only true sanctuary. Sure, there was the Control Tower balcony where she would go to contemplate command decisions, lost friends and allies, and John never hesitated to join her when she was out there, but that was a public place and, though it was an unspoken rule that no one interrupted Elizabeth when she was on what most people thought of as her balcony, it was also an unspoken rule that John was the only one who was allowed to cut into Doctor Weir's alone time. But the balcony was something entirely different from her quarters.

His hazel eyes were moving quickly, taking in every detail. The bookshelves lined with books on every subject, from botany to astrophysics to military tactics to archaeology to medicine to computer sciences to several books on diplomacy. The small stack of novels on her bedside table, none of which he recognized the titles of. The silver pocket-watch that she always had with her was lying on top of her dresser next to a hairbrush and a half-empty bottle of lotion. Her uniform, neatly folded, sitting on a chair beside her closet which lacked in a door, as over half the closets in Atlantis seemed to for some reason or another, showing uniforms and some casual clothes hanging neatly, on the floor of the closet sat three pairs of running shoes, a pair of hiking boots, a barely-worn pair of combat boots, and a pair of sandals that John vaguely remembered her wearing the one time he had managed to drag her to the Mainland for a day at the beach not long after the Athosians started building their colony there. Her laptop was sitting on a table that she obviously used as a desk, a few files stacked beside it, her cup sitting on top of the files, making John believe that Elizabeth had intended on going back to work rather than trying to get some sleep. Beside the desk sat her off-world backpack, filled with what John assumed was whatever personal things that she would be bringing back to Earth with her.

Finally John's eyes landed on Elizabeth herself. Curled up upon herself, wearing baggy sweatpants and tight tank top, not to mention the bunny slippers, her ponytail barely holding any hair in place anymore, she looked so fragile that John was overcome with the desire to wrap her up in his arms and take her to a planet where she could never be hurt in any way. Then, as quickly as that desire had come, it disappeared when his eyes met hers and he saw the undying determination and strength that he loved so much about her and he was reminded of just how strong Elizabeth really was and how a lot of her power lay in the fact that few thought of her as the powerhouse she truly was.

"You okay?" John asked gently.

"Fine," Elizabeth replied. "Tired, but fine."

Not at all placated, John continued. "You left kinda quickly back there. Are you sure you're okay?"

Elizabeth nodded. "Just… nervous about tomorrow," she said, deciding that a half-truth was better than an outright lie. She had never been able to successfully lie to John Sheppard anyway. He had a strange and slightly disturbing ability to read her like a book. She, in turn, had the same ability to read him the same way. "It would be easier if I could just shut off my mind for a few hours."

"No it wouldn't," John replied. Elizabeth frowned at him and he continued. "You can't be an effective leader if you can just shut down at the end of the day. Believe me. I've served under some people who don't care, who can flick a switch when they leave the office and be a completely different person, someone who doesn't hold the lives of others in their hands day in and day out. I know it's hard, Elizabeth, but you can't just shut down. You do that… and you lose a part of who you are." He smiled at her softly. "And we all like you the way you are."

Blushing slightly, Elizabeth smiled back at John. "Thank you," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "So did I really keep you up with my exact time to departure countdown?" she asked, feeling more than a little guilty.

"Nah. I can block that stuff out without much trouble," John said. "I'm just… restless." He narrowed his eyes at her. "But, seriously, you've got to stop doing that. You know how I am with numbers. Now I've got one of those big honkin' bomb clocks in the back of my head, ticking down the seconds."

"Sorry," Elizabeth said earnestly. She really hadn't intended on sharing with anyone her private countdown, it had just slipped out in a conversation with John earlier in the day and she hadn't even realized she had said it until it was out there. "I'll try to keep my mouth shut. But no promises. Like I said, it's subconscious; it's not something I control. Like you and math—you don't try to manipulate numbers in the blink of an eye, you just do it automatically."

John nodded, understanding what it was like to have a strange quirk that you tried so hard to keep from others. At least his quirk had come in handy in daily life, though. "Good. Now, are you sure you don't want to talk about why you bolted out of the kitchen like a scalded kitten?"

Elizabeth shook her head, wrinkling her nose at the thought of a kitten being scalded even as she tried her best to avoid making eye contact with John. "I just didn't want to hang around while three men talked about a hot blonde."

Arching an eyebrow, John looked at Elizabeth, amused. "None of us said anything about how she looks—other than Rodney, but, really, it's Rodney. He's convinced this woman is secretly harbouring a desire to be his love slave," John said sardonically. Elizabeth let out a soft laugh at that. "Serious delusions happening there. Probably a good thing he's started seeing Heightmeyer," he said, meaning it in jest, though, truthfully, John couldn't think of anything better for his friend than some serious therapy—a lot of the things he'd seen in the last few months since coming to Atlantis were terrifying for someone who was experienced in the atrocities of war; for a civilian scientist to be on the front lines, doing what they did, the emotional and psychological fallout was, understandably, tremendous.

"I didn't know that," Elizabeth said, her good mood evaporating, and John cringed internally. He had been hoping to cheer her up, not bring her to a lower depth of whatever not-positive state of being she was currently residing in. "Is anything wrong?" she asked, knowing that, like most ego-driven people, Rodney McKay did not like to talk about things, not the things that hit home. Give him a ZPM or a lab full of technology and he would babble for hours, days even, but one shred of human emotion and he would either clam up or resort to sarcasm.

"I dunno. I don't think so. It's just recently…" John trailed off with a shrug. "He doesn't talk to me about it… I hope he talks to Heightmeyer about it… but that thing with Gaul on the planet with the crashed Wraith ship… it's got him pretty freaked."

"Watching someone you work with commit suicide is, I assume, fairly traumatic, John."

John nodded. "I know. Actually, I'm kinda proud of him."

" Gaul?" Elizabeth asked, shocked.

"No. Rodney. He sought out help independently. I honestly can't say that I'd do the same thing in his position. I doubt most people would, especially not people like Rodney," John said. He didn't mention that he had been in Rodney's position before and he had certainly not sought help of his own accord. "It really surprised me when Heightmeyer sent me an evaluation report for him. I mean, I knew I would be getting one for Teyla, but I sent Teyla to Heightmeyer when she started having those nightmares."

Elizabeth frowned. "Doesn't that break doctor-patient confidentiality? Kate sending you reports on Teyla and Rodney?" she asked.

"There wasn't anything privileged in the reports," John said. "Basically it confirmed that they had been to see her, that they had participated in a therapy session of an unspecified nature X many times in the past week, and that they are both still cleared to be in the field." He shrugged. "Honestly, that's all I need to know; that, while they've got issues, they're working on them and they're fit for duty. I don't need details, and unless they come to me, either as their commanding officer, or as their friend, I'm not going to push it."

"You're not worried about them, though?" Elizabeth asked.

"I'm always worried about them; I worry about everyone. But, relating to their mental health? No. No worries. I mean, Teyla was reluctant—to say the least—at first, but Heightmeyer helps her deal with the nightmares and helped her figure out why she could sense the Wraith, and they have a standing appointment when we're not off-world for what Teyla says Heightmeyer has termed 'maintenance'. And Rodney… he recognized that he might have a problem before it got to actually be a problem, which is the first step to fixing things, at least if the first step of any 12 step program actually does any good."

Frowning, Elizabeth looked down at her hands. "I feel like I should know this stuff, too," she said. "Not just Rodney and Teyla, but everyone. I know the medical details and the specialties and bankable skills but… I've never put much stock in psychology. I don't really understand it. And I really don't like people trying to get into my head—I've spent years making sure that no one can read me on any level beyond what I want them to see, which is problematic for friendships and anything deeper, but for my job it's a necessity. But… all this… the Wraith and the death and the isolation and the culture shock that is Atlantis…" she sighed heavily and tucked a loose curl of hair behind her ear. "There's a psychological price to being here, and I've been hoping that if I ignore that fact it'll go away; like if no one else is having problems with being here, living this life, then there's no reason for me to have problems with it, either." She shook her head. "Maybe when we get back here I should make an appointment with Kate myself."

"Or, if you don't feel comfortable with her trying to get inside your head, you could just talk to your friends more," John suggested gently. "You'd be amazed how much just telling your friends about whatever has your stomach tied up in knots helps."

Elizabeth nodded, though she knew that she wouldn't, couldn't, share the problem that was tying her stomach up in knots with her friends. Not when she had barely just admitted it to herself.

* * *

TBC... 

Love it? Hate it? Let me know.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

* * *

After sending the crates with the files and artefacts through the wormhole, Elizabeth smiled at Teyla. "You're sure you don't want to come along?" she asked the Athosian woman.

"There will be other opportunities for me to visit Earth, Doctor Weir. You will all be busy. I shall remain on Atlantis to assist Doctor Zelenka in the day-to-day affairs of the city until you return," Teyla said with a gentle smile.

They had all been through the same conversation at least half a dozen times in the past few days, and Sheppard knew that Teyla was not going to change her mind. Teyla knew that someone needed to stay and lead those remaining on Atlantis, and, though technically the chain of command didn't include Teyla, those who would have been put in charge had made it clear that they were more than willing to let Teyla run the show in Elizabeth's place for however long the Senior Staff was on Earth. She was, after all, an experienced leader.

Knowing that the longer they kept the Stargate open between galaxies the lower the ZPM's power supply would go, Sheppard decided to cut in before Elizabeth could try to convince Teyla to come back to Earth with them. John wasn't sure why Elizabeth wanted Teyla to go to Earth with them so badly, but he wasn't about to ask. The last thing he wanted was to get someone mad at him for a reason that he was sure he would never be informed of, which was what he was sure would happen if he asked Elizabeth about her constant re-inviting. "If you need anything you know where our allies are, but try to keep 'Gate travel to a minimum until we get back."

"Yes, you have previously instructed me to do so," Teyla said, a ghost of a smile spreading over her lips. "I shall see you when you return."

John smiled. "With popcorn," he said.

Teyla smiled widely. "I would enjoy more popcorn. And perhaps another movie with that distinguished… actor… that I like?" she asked innocently.

"Who?" Elizabeth asked.

"Teyla's got a thing for George Clooney," John said, rolling his eyes.

Elizabeth smiled. "I have all the ER DVD's. I'll make sure I bring them back with me," she promised. "We'll see you in about a month," Elizabeth said before following McKay through the Stargate.

"I hate this," Carson grumbled, looking at the wormhole with a look of fear before John gave him a shove to get him to move.

"Be safe," Teyla said softly.

"You too," John replied before stepping thought the 'Gate.

Once the wormhole had shut down Teyla turned to Doctor Zelenka. "What is an E-R?"

* * *

"Welcome back," O'Neill said, smiling at the four people who had come through the Stargate.

Elizabeth smiled. "It's good to be back, General," she said. She looked at the older General, a two-star, who was standing next to O'Neill, his arms crossed across his chest, a frown on his face.

"Doc, Doc, Major, Doc," O'Neill said, nodding to each of the Lantians in turn. "This is Major General Hank Landry," he said, nodding to his companion, "as of two days ago he is the commander of the SGC. I've been waiting for you guys to get here before I head to Washington. Think of me as the transition team." He clapped his hands energetically. "Okay. First stop, Infirmary," he said cheerfully—cheerfully, Elizabeth assumed, because he wasn't the one who had to go through a medical exam by a total stranger.

John frowned, but didn't complain. He knew the drill—through the 'Gate, to the Infirmary, then to debrief. That was SGC law in any galaxy.

The medical check took a lot longer than any of the Atlantis personnel anticipated—the SGC doctor had been exceptionally thorough, making sure that everything in their medical files was up to date, including every detail of their records from the past year on Atlantis, especially damage done during the recent Wraith siege—but, finally, the four were released. Elizabeth and Rodney had had lunch in the Commessary, though Rodney left when Jack sat down with a slice of lemon merange pie, muttering something about killer Generals and going to find Carson. John had disappeared with his laptop to the quarters that he had been assigned, though he refused to tell anyone what he was doing. After lunch they all went to the briefing room for a basic debrief with Generals O'Neill and Landry, a procedure that took nearly four hours, then they were told to get some rest. They were restricted to the base until they were fully debriefed; VIP quarters having been made ready for them in anticipation of their return.

"Where is Doctor Jackson?" Elizabeth asked Jack as the debriefing broke for the day.

"P6M-681," Jack replied. Elizabeth arched an eyebrow at him and he chuckled softly. "He's wrapping up a relocation project with SG teams 4, 7, and 15. Something about a decaying lunar orbit or something… honestly I've been letting Hank deal with the day-to-day stuff around here for about a month so I'm not as up to speed as I'd like on where my people are. I'll find out, though, and get back to you."

Elizabeth shook her head. "That's okay. There are just some artefacts and tablets that I thought he would be interested in looking at."

"Are you kidding? Daniel actually tried to restrict himself to base until you guys got back so that he'd be here waiting when you came through the 'Gate with all your Ancient doo-dads and whachmacallits. He's gonna pout like a little kid when he finds out that the first mission he's been on since we got back in touch with you guys happened at the same time that you got here," Jack smiled. He genuinely liked Elizabeth, except for when she was lobbying to get Daniel onto the original expedition, and he was glad that she was safe. "You should go get some rest. Tomorrow is going to be another long day," Jack said.

"When isn't it?" Elizabeth asked ironically. "See you in the morning," she called after Jack as he headed out the door. She looked over at John, who was still in his seat at the table, staring blankly at the stack of files in front of him. "John? Are you okay?" Elizabeth asked gently.

Sighing heavily, John pushed back from the table and grabbed the files. "Headache," he confessed.

"Well, you did skip lunch… for some reason," Elizabeth said. The role reversal is not lost on either of them—it's usually John who is pestering her about skipping meals, among other things. "Why exactly did you decide that using the computer was more important than eating actual honest-to-god fresh food for the first time in months?"

John's eyes met Elizabeth's briefly. "I was trying to find Ford's grandparents. But I couldn't remember where he grew up. I'm not even sure I ever knew. I mean, he probably told me… but I obviously didn't remember. It just got me thinking… I treated him like crap most of the time."

"You treated him like he was a little brother, John, and Lieutenant Ford admired you more than you know," Elizabeth said.

"Don't," John said sharply.

"Don't what?" Elizabeth asked, confused.

John started moving toward the door. "Don't talk about him in the past tense," he said before leaving the room and disappearing into the maze of hallways that was the SGC.

* * *

Though the SGC commissary was hardly known for its gourmet cuisine, Sheppard had to admit that it had better coffee than Atlantis. Though, he supposed, that was probably because the coffee on Atlantis was weak instant crap while the SGC actually got fresh ground coffee beans. He wasn't as much of a caffeine addict as McKay or Elizabeth, but John did like his coffee strong and hot, two things that the coffee back home—he wasn't entirely sure when Atlantis became home, but it was—never managed to be.

"Mind if I join you?" a woman asked, jolting John out of his coffee-induced stupor.

Looking up, Sheppard smiled brightly at the familiar face. "Long time, Samantha," he said, pushing a chair out with his foot. A second later the connection was made in his head. His Samantha was one and the same as Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter, Rodney's infamous brilliant tall blonde. Immediately he sat up straight, military training, something that he didn't have to worry about much on Atlantis, kicking in. "Sorry. _Ma'am_," he added. The last time he had seen her they had both been Captains, both freshly promoted. He wasn't sure why he hadn't seen her when he first came to Cheyenne Mountain, the same day that he first stepped through the Stargate ten months earlier, and he thought it was a little strange that he had never caught on to the fact that the Sam Carter he'd served with, she of the brilliant astrophysics mind, blonde hair, blue eyes, and bright smile, was the same Samantha Carter that Rodney McKay was constantly drooling over.

"Cut that out," Sam frowned as she sat down. "And, yes, it has been a long time. Last time I saw you I was being transferred to another fighter wing, we were both covered in six months worth of desert dust and, if I recall, you were dripping with jet fuel for some reason."

"Jet fuel and crumbs from those god-awful homemade cookies that Archer's girl kept sending him," John laughed, nodding. "Not exactly my finest hour," he admitted.

"No, not really, but from what I hear you've had more than your fair share of those in the past year," Sam said. "You've got some pretty hardcore enemies on your hands, John."

"That's quite the understatement," John said, his good humour fading. "Got any advice? From what I hear you're a seasoned veteran at dealing with big time larger-than-life evil enemies."

Sam smiled softly. "It's all about trial and error. You try something, and if it works, great, but if it doesn't you try the next thing. One mission we went through plans A through T before we found a tactic that worked," Sam said. John smiled at that, though he was sure it was true. "Don't let a failed plan throw you. There's a certain amount of a glass-half-full mentality that you've got to adapt. Otherwise you'll burn out, or worse."

"Anything else? Other than back up our back up plans, I mean," John said.

"Yeah. Trust your team," Sam said.

John looked down at his coffee, thinking about Ford.

"What is it?" Sam asked.

"I forgot how impossible it is for me to hide things from you," he said, smiling softly. "Nearly twenty years and you can still read me like a book," Sheppard said.

Sam cringed. "Don't say it like that. It makes me feel old," she said. John smiled softly. "So… you gonna tell me what's eating you or do I have to force it out of you?" Sam asked, only half teasing.

"Lieutenant Ford, one of my people, he was drugged by the enzyme the Wraith use to immobilize their victims while they feed. He… I guess you would have to say he got addicted to it. He stole a Puddle Jumper and took off through the Stargate."

"I'm sorry," Sam said softly. "Did you know him well?"

Shrugging, John leaned back in his chair. "Better than I know a lot of people there. He was kinda like a little brother, annoying but you don't have the heart to get rid of him."

"There's still hope, right? You might be able to find him, bring him home," Sam said. "If he's addicted to the Wraith enzyme… he'll need a supply. You find the supply, you find your man. Bring him home, detox him, and go from there."

"That's the glass half full thing talking, right?"

"That was me being supportive. Now here is me being completely honest," Sam said. "Lieutenant Ford will be looking for a supply of this enzyme, and as I understand it, the only way to get it is directly from the source. That means he has to actively search out the Wraith. He might survive a few days, a few weeks, hell, he could make it a few months, I don't know, it depends on how resourceful and how lucky he is. But you say he's addicted, and addictions all work the same way, no matter if they're terrestrial or alien. Over time the same dose won't have the same effect. He'll need to increase the amount of the enzyme he takes. He'll begin to grow reckless, he'll take risks, he'll get cocky, he'll think he's freaking invincible. And if you do see him again the things he says won't be things that the person you know would say, they won't be things that the person you know would even think. It's going to break your heart. But you're going to have to ignore that because all you have to be able to focus on getting him better."

Sam took a slow breath, and John could see her actually shaking.

"Hey, Samantha, talk to me," he said, reaching across the table and putting his hand on her quivering hand. "Someone you love… dealt with an addiction," he said. Sam nodded shakily. "Who?" John asked, tangling his fingers with hers and not letting go, offering what comfort he could, knowing that it would never be enough.

"Daniel," Sam said softly. "It was… almost eight years ago. The Goa'uld have these sarcophagi based on stolen Ancient technology. They can bring you back from the edge of death in just a few minutes, which is a great concept, except there's… there's a catch. It takes away your soul. Bit by bit, it takes away the parts of you that make you human."

"And… Doctor Jackson got addicted to the sarcophagus?" John guessed, his voice gentle.

"We were on a planet… and we were captured and put to work in Naqueda mines. The king's daughter decided that Daniel was her destiny and she saved his life with the sarcophagus. But then… she asked him to use it again, when he was healthy, and he did because he thought it was the only way to get her to trust him so he could get the rest of us out of the mine," Sam said. She shifted her weight, clearly uncomfortable with the subject, but she didn't stop. That was something John had always admired about her. She never gave up, even when things got really tough. "We didn't have a clear understanding of Goa'uld technology back then… but it turns out that when you use the sarcophagus when you're healthy it just makes you stronger. We didn't realize the other thing, that Daniel was losing his soul, until later. It… it got real bad for a while. But what was harder was watching him deal with the withdrawal, knowing that there was nothing we cold do to stop the pain he was in, knowing that he had to go through the torture before he could be himself again."

After a minute Sam shook her head, shaking away the memories of that dark time in her past. She gave his fingers a squeeze before untangling their fingers and pulling her hand away from his. "I just want you to be aware of how hard this is going to be, John. Both for you and for him. And that's if you even find him, which is a big if considering the number of planets with a Stargate he could go to," Sam said.

John nodded. "I know," he said, looking down at his coffee. "But he's just a kid. He joined the expedition before he even left the Academy."

Sam nodded. "We started recruiting directly from the Academy pretty early into the program. It's easier to train for non-terrestrial thought processes before you've locked yourself in to the terrestrial. Plus, if you just keep bringing in senior officers with field and command experience…"

"No new blood to keep the legacy going," John nodded. "Still… he's just a kid. When we sent those files and letters a few weeks ago all he wanted to do was tell his grandmother how much he missed her." He sighed heavily. "And… now I'm waiting to finish all this debriefing crap so I can leave the mountain and tell his grandmother that her grandson, who she raised since he was a little kid, is missing in action." John looked at Sam, his hazel eyes telling Sam just how much it hurt him to know that he had to break a grandmother's heart. "I've never had to deal with this part of being a leader before."

"It never gets any easier," Sam said. "Which is good," she continued. "It shouldn't be easy."

"No, it shouldn't," John agreed.

* * *

TBC...

Love it? Hate it? Let me know.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

* * *

For the next three days the four Lantians were debriefed until the SGC knew every detail about every mission, discovery, screw-up, enemy, ally, death, and incidental action from the Atlantis expedition starting with the instant they stepped through the Stargate right up to the morning that they left to return through the Stargate to Earth. Finally they were finished, though, and the subject of new recruitments had taken over the attention of the four Lantians, the two Generals, and the department heads from within the SGC.

"Okay here's the deal. There is an expected level of cannibalism from SGC personnel. You'll need people with experience and our standing orders have become a lot easier to deal with lately," Landry said. "That said, please remember that the threat in the Pegasus Galaxy is not the only concern we have to deal with, and so I'm asking you to make sure that your people keep that in mind when they start taking away my people."

"Understood," Elizabeth nodded, though she didn't appreciate the implication that the situation was her people versus his people.

"Of course, now that the Atlantis expedition isn't a no-turning-back potential suicide mission, there are a lot more volunteers," Jack put in, friendlier, familiar, and much easier to deal with than the new General, "so you and your people will have more leeway when it comes to the selection process." He checked his watch. "The Pentagon has put Major Davis in charge of the team that is tasked with bringing in the outside resources that you've requested. He should be contacting us soon with a progress report."

Sam, who had been quite since the meeting began, chose that moment to speak. "If I may," she said, glancing at the Generals who both nodded, giving her the floor. "The list of scientists that you want to try to bring into the program. There are some big names on your list, Doctor Weir."

"If you say so. In this particular arena I am simply a messenger. Each department gave me names of people that they thought would be suited to the challenge of life in Pegasus," Elizabeth said.

"I'm not sure you understand my point," Sam said.

"I'm not sure I do either, Colonel," Elizabeth replied.

Sam looked at General Landry who nodded, giving her his permission to continue. "Even if you get the majority of them to sign the one-year contract it is unlikely that you will be able to return to Atlantis with more than a handful of the independent scientists that Major Davis is contacting," Sam said.

"And why is that?" Elizabeth asked.

Landry fielded that one. "Because the mass disappearance of some of the brightest minds on this planet will undoubtedly raise some eyebrows and there is only so far the governments involved will be able to temper the fallout."

Sitting back in her seat, Elizabeth contemplated the other people in the room. She knew that General O'Neill was on her side as long as she didn't actively attempt to get Doctor Jackson to come to Atlantis, and while she would like to have him there for both his expertise and his friendship, she would much prefer allies on Earth with the kind of pull that Jack had. It was hard for her to tell where General Landry was, though she got the impression that he was unhappy with the fact that the United States planned on putting more money and emphasis on the Atlantis expedition than on the SGC itself so Elizabeth found herself feeling wary of him. And Lieutenant Colonel Carter seemed like she was feeling particularly antagonistic toward the Lantian leader, an attitude that Elizabeth didn't understand—they hadn't been close when Elizabeth had run the SGC, but Carter knew that Elizabeth hadn't sought out the position, that she hadn't tried to take General Hammond out of his command, and that, when Vice President Kinsey had lost all influence when he'd 'resigned', Elizabeth had tried to get General Hammond to take the job back, but he had decided that being in charge of Homeworld Security was where he needed to be, which was when Elizabeth had recommended that Jack be given command because she knew that everyone at the SGC trusted him implicitly.

Since she didn't have as many allies in the room as she would have liked Elizabeth opted for the cautious route. "The standing cover story of a scientific expedition of a classified nature should be sufficient, especially now that we have both the **Daedalus **making regular trips between galaxies and the ZPM to power the 'Gate for regular transmissions to Earth. If anything it should be easier to bring personnel to Atlantis now than it was before since all we're asking for is a one-year contract, rather than the uncertainty of a year ago," Elizabeth said. "Some of the original members of the expedition are willing to return to Earth to continue their work; either to work at the SGC or Area 51, assuming that they get some time with their loved ones before they start their work here, which should help with the cover story's integrity. Right now Atlantis is running with what amounts to a skeleton staff in most areas, and I'm sure we can get by as is for a while, but I'm sure you'll agree that merely getting by is in no way good enough for an endeavour of this magnitude."

* * *

When she had been in charge of the SGC, though the few months had been brief, one of Elizabeth's favourite places to spend time was the briefing room overlooking the Gateroom. After spending so many hours in debrief there since returning to Earth, though, Elizabeth found herself wanting to be anywhere but that room. 

Once the meeting had broken up Elizabeth decided to go to her second favourite place in the SGC. Several corridors and an elevator ride later Elizabeth rapped her knuckles on the open door. The large room didn't look like she remembered. Artefacts were gone from shelves and the walls were almost completely bare. Books were in various stages of being boxed up, piles scattered on every surface, and empty coffee cups, both ceramic and paper, were sitting all around the archaeologist.

" Elizabeth," Daniel said, looking up from the artefact he was cataloguing. "I heard you were back. How does it feel to be home again?"

"I'll let you know when I get back to Atlantis," Elizabeth said with a small smile.

Daniel returned her smile. "I remember that feeling. It's disorienting, the feeling that the planet you were born on isn't truly home anymore. When I first came back from Abydos… it was Earth that was alien to me. It's amazing how quickly things like that can shift."

"It really is," Elizabeth agreed. She let her eyes wander around the room that was, for the first time she could remember, startlingly brightly lit. "You going somewhere?" she asked, pointing to the boxes that were taped up and labelled carefully, then to the boxes that were half packed or completely empty and waiting to be filled.

For a second Daniel frowned, confused, then comprehension struck and he smiled and nodded. "To Atlantis," he said in answer to her question. Then, a beat later, he added, "That is, of course, assuming that you want me there."

Elizabeth arched an eyebrow at Daniel. "General O'Neill is letting you go?"

"Hardly," Daniel chuckled. "General Hammond made it one of his last orders of business before he officially retired. Jack's just given up trying to fight it—probably because no one else on SG-1 is staying here so keeping me here is pretty pointless." He shrugged. "The Goa'uld are more or less gone, and those that are still out there don't have any power to speak of. I joined the SGC to find Sha're, then to find her son, and then… well, then I lost focus for a while, but after I came back from my time in what Jack likes to call 'Oma-Land', I stayed to defeat the Goa'uld."

"Well, job well done," Elizabeth said honestly. "So, nothing keeping you here?"

Daniel shrugged again. "It's kinda the end of an era around here right now. Sam's about to head off to Area 51 to head up R-and-D, and Teal'c is mostly living on Dakara right now with the Free Jaffa Nation, and Jack is only in town right now to deal with you guys."

"And you're coming to Atlantis," Elizabeth said.

"Only if the leader of the expedition wants me there. She has yet to say anything to the positive or the negative about that one, which, I've gotta say, is kinda annoying," Daniel said, mostly teasing.

She had wanted Daniel to join the original expedition but Jack had been very firm in his denial of that request, and Elizabeth had to admit that she could see why. Daniel and Jack, though not as close as they once had been, were still best friends, brothers, and Jack had already left Daniel on one alien planet knowing there was no way home. Sending him to Atlantis with the first expedition would have been tantamount to the same thing, only worse because at least on Abydos Daniel had had a family, albeit new and slightly awkward. He had people to take care of him. And, while Elizabeth knew that Jack had known that Daniel would have been taken care of on Atlantis, too, Elizabeth also knew the desire to protect the ones you loved, to protect the people who were your family, not by blood, but by something that was, in a way, almost stronger.

Now, of course, Atlantis had a ZPM, making 'Gate travel from Atlantis to Earth possible, if limited. There was also the **Daedalus **that would be making regular trips between galaxies. The prospect of allowing loved ones to go to a galaxy far-far away was less daunting once there was the possibility of that loved one coming back.

Elizabeth suddenly found herself unable to keep the smile off her face. "I can't wait to show you around Atlantis, Daniel. You're going to love it." She smiled brightly. "It's absolutely amazing. There are times when I can actually feel the city vibrating." She blushed. "Of course, the massive whale-like creatures that live in the ocean under Atlantis probably have something to do with that, but I like to think that the city is alive."

"I can't wait to see it," Daniel grinned.

"It's great that you get to come with us this time," Elizabeth said as she hopped up on the counter in the middle of Daniel's lab. "Our only archaeologist is completely out of her depth when it comes to Ancient artefacts—I honestly don't know how she got the slot. Your expertise is going to be… well… perfect."

"But no pressure, right?" Daniel smirked.

Elizabeth blushed. "Sorry. I've just been trying so hard to keep my archaeologist from going insane while doing a lot of her work myself. It'll be nice to not have to worry about doing the work of other departments. I might actually get my own work done from time to time."

* * *

The rapping of knuckles on the door brought John's head out of the SG team files that it had been _suggested _(read: ordered) by Jack O'Neill that John familiarize himself with the SGC protocol for offworld interaction. Just because his file said that he had a history of disobeying or disregarding orders didn't mean he didn't take any of them, especially from people who had earned his respect, and, from stories that he had heard from multiple sources—Sam, Elizabeth, Rodney, the Marines that had served with or under General Jack O'Neill—as well as from the conversation that they had had in the helo that day when he found out more than he had frankly been ready to know about what the USAF was doing in Colorado, John truly respected Jack O'Neill, and not in the 'he is a General so I have to' way but in the 'he worked his way through the ranks doing the jobs no one wanted and he is an amazing leader and soldier and about ten or fifteen years ago he was me' kind of way that doesn't fade with time. The only thing that John could honestly say he didn't like about Jack O'Neill was the hockey thing, though he was wise enough not to say anything—Sam had told him what Jack did to people who put down his precious hockey games. 

So, orders (suggestions that were really orders) in hand, John had talked to the short Master Chief Sergeant in the Control Room, since he seemed to know everything there was to know—which, John quickly found out, was true, even to the point of a slightly alarming psychic thing that, quite frankly, creeped John out a little—and half an hour later he had had ten months worth of SG mission files, carefully boxed up in crates that were labelled with dates, times, planetary designations, and, on some, the Goa'uld that had been eliminated (the last written in bright red permanent marker with a smiley face next to it) delivered to his quarters. The rest were ready when he wanted them, if he wanted them, and he was given the extension for someone who would bring the next load up and take the first load away. He'd started with the beginning, with the first mission to Abydos, then the second mission to Abydos a year later, and was mid-way through the alternate reality mirror debacle.

And he was about two seconds from ripping his own hair out.

The SG-1 files were interesting, though he found his blood boiling whenever he came across the updated list of injuries that Sam had sustained. The other SG teams had a few interesting exploits, some discoveries that he had made note of for further exploration later, but, really, SG-1 was the team that caught his attention the most, and not just because reading the files was helping him figure out what his oldest friend had been doing for the past eight years or so.

"Come in," John said after far too long—he had tried, unsuccessfully, to open the door with his mind, the way he could on Atlantis, delaying his response. He had also walked around in the dark for two minutes before realizing that he would have to flick the lights on himself, too, and that there was nothing he could do about the temperature in the room that, back on Atlantis, adjusted itself to his preference automatically.

The door opened slightly but no one came in. "You're not doing anything dirty, are you? 'Cause it took you a while to answer and, even though I've seen all you've got to show, I'm not overly eager to see it again," Sam said through the crack in the door.

"Get your ass in here, Samantha," John groaned. The door opened completely and the blonde came inside. "What's up?"

"I, uh, well, see, the thing is that today… I was a bit of… well, I was a major bitch to Elizabeth in the meeting earlier about the number of people she wants to be sent to Atlantis this time… and I feel really crappy about it. So… I know that you know her, that you're pretty good friends with her, and I was wondering if there was a way for me to… to make things right. Because, well, we work together and she's your boss and she's a good person and I've never really given her the credit she deserves, and I want to fix that. So I'm here looking for advice. Which is not exactly in character for me, and it's been a long time since I've come to i you /i for advice—it's been a long time since I've even seen you, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that I need your advice."

"Yeah, that much is obvious," John said with a soft smile.

Sam frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're babbling, Samantha. You only do that when you're either so exhausted that you can't see straight or when you are so thrown by something that you're completely out of your depth. Since you don't look like the living dead—which you tend to when you've reached that state of exhaustion where your eyes start crossing—I'm going to say it's the latter," John said. "And Elizabeth doesn't hold grudges. You're right. She's a good person. Just be straight with her, say your piece, try not to babble too much, and, above all else, be completely honest. Honesty is a big thing for her."

"Okay. Thanks," she said. Sam looked around, arching an eyebrow at the boxes of files that took up most of the free space in his tiny quarters. "So, uh, what's going on here? Are quarters on Atlantis so small that you felt the overwhelming desire to fill all the extra five square feet in here with stuff so you'd feel more at home?"

"No. my room on Atlantis is… nice. Right on the water—though, really, everything is right on the water, so that's not much of a claim, there. Big windows, nice balcony, great view of the sunrise. About three times the size of this dank little cell," John said.

Smiling softly, Sam nodded. "We turned the tiny dorms from when this facility was a missile silo into guest quarters when we first started out. Believe me, this is a major improvement from the metal-frame bunk beds that used to be in here." She looked at the boxes again. " Mission files?" she inquired.

"Yeah. I'm, uh, familiarizing myself with SGC protocols. Since, you know, I was sorta added to the guest list at the last second," he explained. He shrugged. " Elizabeth's tried to drill it all into my head, but… not so successful."

Sam shook her head. "Seriously, John, it took us a long time to get protocols and rules in place that were, quite literally, universal. There is a reason that they exist."

"Hey, it's not like I planned on being military commander of the expedition," John protested. "Colonel Sumner was supposed to take care of rules and stuff. My job description was… well, fairly undefined, but it's not like there was a great span of time between Elizabeth offering me the job and the first time I actually stepped through the 'Gate. Speaking of which, why didn't I see you when I was here back then?"

"SG-1 was on stand-down while Daniel was in Antarctica so Teal'c went to spend some time with his son and I was on the Alpha Site with my dad, working on some experiments," Sam said.

"Ah," John nodded. He frowned. "Your dad knows about the program?"

Sam glanced at the file that John was reading. "You'll get to that mission soon enough."

"Give me the Readers Digest version," John said.

"Dad was sick—cancer. We met a race of aliens that… it's kinda hard to explain, but they—the Tok'ra—evolved from the Goa'uld thousands of years ago. They're the good guys, really. Dad became a Tok'ra. He… he was host to Selmac, one of the oldest and wisest of all the Tok'ra."

John frowned. "Was?" he echoed gently. Sam nodded. "What happened?"

"Selmac was dying. Normally Selmac would have just left her host, but dad was helping us fight Anubis and he thought that we'd need Selmac… by the time the fight was over… it was too late. When Selmac died… dad died, too," Sam said. John dropped the file he was reading and stood up, pulling Sam into his arms. She sank into his embrace willingly, grateful for the familiar scent and feel of her oldest friend. "I'm sorry," Sam said softly, "it's just… it was only a few weeks ago… it's still so fresh… and we had finally developed a relationship, a real relationship, and then… then he's just gone."

"Oh, Samantha, I'm so sorry," John whispered. "I'm so, so sorry."

* * *

TBC...

Love it? Hate it? Let me know.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

* * *

Four people sat around a table in the Commissary, all with coffee cups in hand, various foods filling their individual trays. The Scot had a sandwich and some kind of soup, though even he didn't know what it was, exactly. One of the Americans had a salad and an extremely large brownie sitting next to each other—the brownie had more missing from it than the salad did. The other American had a turkey sandwich, a personal luxury that he had not been afforded for several months. And the Canadian had heaping piles of everything except for the lemon chicken, which the other three had avoided as well, simply because no one wanted to hear about the dangers of citrus _again_.

"Okay, run the timeline by me one more time," John said before putting down his coffee and reaching for his sandwich—fresh turkey, even, not processed cold cuts, either, which was something that had the pilot beaming in a way that Elizabeth had said was disturbing when directed at food and Rodney had said was simply disturbing in general. John had kept his mouth shut when Elizabeth showed the same glee at the giant brownies that she had heard about from Daniel but never gotten the chance to experience for herself.

Elizabeth took a slow sip of her coffee, relishing the taste of actual coffee, not the improvised stuff made from a bean on P9Y-629 that shared a lot of qualities with the coffee bean—at least, that was what her science teams had told her and, really, she hadn't cared about anything other than the fact that the people who were going through caffeine withdrawals, herself included, would once again have access to their vice of choice. The coffee wasn't great—Elizabeth knew that the only really good coffee on the base was in the lab of Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter or, if he had stolen her coffee maker again, Doctor Daniel Jackson's office—but it was a hell of a lot better than the Fluntuthga Seed coffee-like-substance that most of Atlantis had been living on for the several weeks preceding the siege. Once she had savoured her coffee as much as possible, Elizabeth put her cup down and began picking at her salad, knowing that she should at least make a dent in it considering that she was eating with her physician who was constantly badgering her to eat regular meals and get more sleep and do all the things that she simply did not have time for while running the city.

"We're on Earth for two weeks, give or take a day or so," Elizabeth said, her voice not betraying the frustration she was feeling at having to go over the schedule for their time on Earth for what she was sure was the fortieth time. "During that time the three of you have to flesh out your departments. I'm going to be leaving for DC later today with General O'Neill and we're going to have a series of meetings with the IOA as well as the President and from there I'll be able to give you guys firm numbers for how many more people, civilian or not, they are willing to support. Hopefully staffing won't take too long—I know you all have names in mind, and there are a lot of files that the SGC has waiting for you to go through—so any time between the time you finish staffing your department and the time that we board the **Daedalus **is yours to do with as you wish. The **Daedalus **should be back in Earth's orbit in ten to twelve days, and then there will be two more days for the scientists at Area 51 to go over it to make sure that nothing got too badly screwed up since it left Earth. After that we board the **Daedalus **, and eighteen days later we're back on Atlantis."

"What are we supposed to do until you get back to us with numbers?" John asked.

Elizabeth shrugged. "Go off-world with one of the many SG teams that are willing, if not eager, to have you join them on a mission. Relax. Maybe take a day or two to visit friends or family, though I wouldn't plan any long trips until after you've staffed your department—believe me, General Landry wants the staffing process completed as quickly as possible and, honestly, I agree with him. We need to get this done."

"Says the woman who had her department staffed the moment she stepped foot on Earth again," Rodney groused.

"My department is linguistics and diplomacy. There are very few people who fit the job description, Rodney, especially when it comes to the Ancients. It's pretty much Daniel and a few people that he's trained," Elizabeth said. "Thank god he's going to be coming back with us," she added, smiling brightly at the thought of how nice it would be to have Daniel on Atlantis. He knew more about Ascension than they would ever learn from the Ancient database. He could pick up a language with almost no effort and the way his mind interpreted things was amazing, and, usually, right. He was field-ready, had been on a front-line team for the past nine years except for the year he spent as an Ascended Ancient, and could take care of himself as well as, if not better than, most of the military personnel that were already on Atlantis. He had spent a year living on an alien planet, becoming as beloved to the people of Abydos as any native to the planet, educating the locals and creating quite the stable little family unit. And, on top of all that, he was a friend and, while she was friends with some people, Elizabeth didn't have many close friends beyond John, Teyla, Rodney, and Carson.

Rodney continued to frown, but he didn't say anything more about the fact that he had so much more work to do when it came to filling the voids in his department, mostly because Carson and John were taking turns kicking him in the shins to get him to keep his mouth shut on the topic.

"Well, first thing I'm gonna do is get myself a place off-base," John said, bringing the subject off of their mutual staffing woes. "There's got to be a hotel or two in the area that exceed the luxuries of the VIP suite at Casa-De-SGC."

"You don't have anyone you want to visit?" Elizabeth asked. She had been curious about John's past, about his family, since they met, and when he had declined to sent any message when the rest of them were sending their goodbyes a few weeks previously her curiosity had grown. However, with the impending threat of the Wraith had made her push her inquisitiveness aside in favour of other, more important, matters.

John shook his head. "No, no one," he said before taking a large bite of his sandwich. He checked the time and frowned. "Crap. I'm late," he said, downing the rest of his coffee and taking the rest of his sandwich with him as he stood up. "If I don't see you before you leave have a good trip," he said to Elizabeth.

"Don't get into too much trouble while I'm gone," Elizabeth replied.

"No promises," John said with a smile before nodding to Carson and Rodney and leaving the Commissary.

* * *

"Ah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no," Sam said, shaking her head as John entered her lab. "Not happening, John. You remember the rules."

"Yeah, yeah, no food in the lab," John said, rolling his eyes. He stuffed the remainder of his sandwich into his mouth and shot Sam a 'good enough?' look. She frowned at him, but didn't say anything, moving, instead, to fiddle with the Naqueda generator that was in several pieces on her table—John recognized it as one that he had taken apart and put back together a few times over the past year, most notably during the Genii incursion of Atlantis during the massive storm that the city had barely survived. "So what did you want to see me about?" John asked after carefully chewing and swallowing the dregs of his meal.

"P9T-934," Sam said as she moved from the Naqueda generator to grab a slim file—a mission profile, John recognized, having seen more than enough since returning to Earth—from the table that her African violets were blooming upon. Sam handed the file to John who took it but didn't open it, waiting, instead, for Sam to fill him in. "An aerial survey showed extensive ruins about a mile from the 'Gate. Daniel says they're Ancient, so… well, he's almost always right about these things, so if he says they're Ancient… they're Ancient. The problem is that there is a native animal to 934 that is something like a wild boar crossed with a sabre-toothed tiger that is roughly the size of an adult grizzly."

"Cuddly," John commented.

"Exactly," Sam agreed. "Anyway, I could really use another set of eyes out there, especially for when we get to the ruins because… well, Daniel has a tendency to get wrapped up in his work."

"Not that you would ever be guilty of the same crime," John deadpanned."

Sam crossed her arms across her chest and lined John up with a glare that he was all-too familiar with. He liked to think of it as the 'get that bimbo out of my bathtub' look. Holding up his hands in surrender, John shut his mouth, promising with his eyes that he would cut out the commentary. Sam relaxed, going back to her Naqueda generator. "General O'Neill and General Landry have both already signed off on you joining SG-1, and Doctor Weir has approved both you and Rodney going off-world with SG teams as long as you both staff your units effectively while you're on Earth. Just let me know if you're in or not."

"I'm in," John said without hesitation.

"Good," Sam nodded. "1300, full gear, in the Gateroom." She gave him a push toward the door. "Now leave. I have a lot of work to finish up before I move and not a lot of time to do it in. And you lot coming with two damaged Naqueda generators certainly didn't lighten my load."

"Yeah, sorry about that. It's been… a hellova year," John said sheepishly.

Sam arched an eyebrow at him. "So I've heard," she said before turning back to her work. "1300," she reminded him as he headed for the door.

"See you then," John called over his shoulder.

* * *

Sam entered the control room, her eyes searching for her target. Finding her, Sam crossed the room and caught Elizabeth's attention. "Doctor Weir, you wouldn't happen to know where John—sorry, where _Major Sheppard_—is, would you?" Sam asked. She was having trouble remembering that almost no one knew that she and John had been friends for over fifteen years. Most people didn't even know that they knew each other before he had come back from Atlantis.

"Not off hand, no, but Rodney found an Ancient device that he was quite eager to test out. That usually means that Major Sheppard is stuck playing guinea pig," Elizabeth said. "Do you mind if I ask why you're looking for him?"

"He's joining SG-1 on the mission we're scheduled for today," Sam said. "We're heading to P9T-934. There are some ruins that Daniel wants to take a closer look at." She looked at her watch. "John was supposed to meet me in the Gateroom twenty minutes ago." She frowned. "Punctuality has never been his thing but this is pushing it," she muttered.

Elizabeth cocked her head to one side slightly. "Colonel, do you know Major Sheppard?"

"John and I have known each other for years," Sam said. "And you can lose the 'Colonel', Doctor. Sam's fine. Or Samantha."

Pieces of a puzzle that had been plaguing Elizabeth since before she had returned from Atlantis began falling into place, and she really didn't like the way the picture was turning out. Still, she put her best act on and hid everything she was feeling behind several layers of diplomatic pleasantry. "In that case you can lose the 'Doctor'… Sam," Elizabeth said.

Sam smiled softly, and then looked down at her feet for a moment before meeting Elizabeth's eyes. "I'm sorry about that meeting. I was rude and you had done nothing to deserve it," she said.

"This program has been your secret to keep for nearly a decade. I'm the interloper here. I get that," Elizabeth said honestly. "I think that Rodney was assigned a temporary lab somewhere on Level 19. I'd look for Major Sheppard there, first."

Sam nodded. "Thanks. I will," she said. "You're… you're heading to Washington now, right?"

"My ride leaves for Peterson in about half an hour. The IOA has set up an exhaustive series of meetings for me," Elizabeth nodded. "Some people higher up the chain of command don't seem able to accept that the Wraith are a clear and present threat to both Atlantis and, quite possibly, this galaxy as well. I'm supposed to meet up with General O'Neill. Thankfully he's in our corner on this."

"Well, hopefully they'll be easier to convince than the people we had to deal with the get the Stargate Program up and running in the first place. No one wanted to believe that the Goa'uld existed, not to mention the fact that just burying the 'Gate would only delay an attack until they could get their ships here," Sam said. She shrugged. "Maybe the work we've done here will help soften them up," she suggested.

"Believe me, that is part of my argument," Elizabeth said.

"If it helps, General O'Neill is probably the best person to have in your corner right now," Sam said.

Elizabeth nodded. "I know," she said. Sam smiled and turned to leave. "Sam?" Elizabeth called after the blonde Colonel.

"Yeah?" Sam asked, turning back to face the brunette.

"Take care of John out there," Elizabeth requested.

"Always," Sam promised before leaving the control room to head for the labs in search of her wayward long-time friend.

* * *

"I'm supposed to be somewhere, McKay," John complained as he shifted in his seat. He had been sitting in Rodney's temporary lab for quite a while, he wasn't sure how long exactly, hooked up to some Ancient device that Rodney was sure held the answers to all the questions in the universe—John thought it looked like a plunger, albeit one of Ancient design, but when he had said so he'd simply gotten ten minutes of sarcastic questions on when he became an expert in Ancient technology. John didn't see the point in reminding Rodney that, despite the astrophysicist's delusions of being the smartest person in two galaxies, other people were what most would consider experts in subjects that Rodney liked to think only he had mastered, and that John knew a lot more about the Ancients and Ancient technology than he let on. John liked learning, though, like his skill with numbers, he hid it behind multiple layers of misdirection and other techniques that he had mastered over the years.

"No one knows where you are. Where could you possibly need to be?" Rodney asked as he took note of the most recent readings.

John was about to answer when Sam appeared in the doorway, geared up for a mission. "There you are!" the blonde Lieutenant Colonel exclaimed.

"Sam!" Rodney choked, straightened his spine and smoothing down his rather grungy grey-ish lab coat. "You were looking for me?" he asked, intrigued.

"Hardly, McKay," Sam said, rolling her eyes. "I thought I told you 1300, John. It's 1330."

"Crap," John cringed, pulling the wires that attacked his body to the device, ignoring, as usual, Rodney's protests. "Sorry, Samantha. McKay shanghaied me. Can you give me five minutes to get ready?"

Sam smiled softly. "You've got ten. But this is a one-time reprieve, John," she warned.

"Thanks," Sheppard said. He gave Sam's hand a squeeze and ruffled her hair affectionately as he passed her on the way out of the lab.

"Gateroom, ten minutes," Sam called after the retreating Major.

"I'll be there," John called back before disappearing around a corner.

Sam peered at the device that Rodney had been testing. "What are you doing hooking John up to that?" she demanded.

"To find out what it is. He has amazing control over Ancient technolo—why do you keep calling him John?" Rodney frowned.

"Don't _ever _just hook someone up to devices that you know nothing about," Sam said, her voice hard and unforgiving. She turned on her heel, heading off in the direction that Sheppard had gone only moments before. "And, for your information, that Ancient device that you're testing? It's a freaking plunger," she called over her shoulder before disappearing from Rodney's sight.

* * *

TBC...

Love it? Hate it? Let me know.


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

* * *

She could feel him watching her and, though it was slightly unnerving, Elizabeth knew that she would have to deal with General Jack O'Neill's assessing stare, at least until he figured out what he was trying to figure out. They were sitting across from each other in a small waiting area, their transport stalled for some technical reason that had Elizabeth a little nervous but didn't seem to phase Jack in the slightest so she tried to ignore the gnawing animal that was eating at her insides as they sat and waited for their plane to be ready to leave. Jack was idly tapping his fingertips on the cover of the paperback spy novel he was holding but not reading, and she had a newspaper, something that, even if she hadn't realized it, she had missed intensely while in the Pegasus Galaxy. There was something comforting about newsprint, about the way it smudged at her fingertips just slightly, the sound it made when you turned the page and flattened out the folds, the smell of the recycled paper and the ink and the familiar and never-changing font and size of the lettering. It was reassuring, a welcome reminder of simple things that were so easily taken for granted. Newspapers were a piece of her past that she would never willingly let go of.

When she had first learned to read English it had been with newspapers, a father-daughter daily ritual that had continued, in one way or another, until her father had died in a car accident when she was twelve. When she was first starting to learn she would sit on her father's lap in the evenings and her chubby fingers would slide over the pages as her lips and tongue fumbled over words and her father's gentle encouragement backed her up, continuous and unwavering in his belief that she could do anything she set her mind to—he never gave her the answers, just his support, knowing that since she had been born Elizabeth Weir had been the type who needed to get to the bottom of something by herself and who did not take kindly to those who tried to do something for her. Later she would sit across from her father, sometimes with a newspaper, other times with a book or magazine, and they would both sit and read together, sometimes silently, other times aloud, neither one hesitant to point out something that they were reading that they thought the other would be interested in. After her father died Elizabeth had continued curling up in her usual chair, newspaper or book in hand, and she would read, usually silently, though occasionally aloud, especially when she came across something she thought her father would be interested in. At least until her mother's job began demanding too much of her time and Elizabeth found herself attending a boarding school in Switzerland, living out a slightly twisted cliché as her mother met and married the epitome of evil stepfathers who had insisted that Elizabeth's mother leave her job but that Elizabeth stay in Switzerland for her schooling.

Once she reached the sports section Elizabeth refolded the newspaper neatly and tucked it into an outside pocket of her briefcase. Despite the numerous times she had watched John's football tape with him, and despite her mild passing interest in sports in general, Elizabeth was not a fan and rarely, if ever, read the sports section. Occasionally, when it was raining outside and she had a day off from whatever job she had at that time, she would sit down with a cup of coffee and read a paper cover to cover, but, even before she was brought into the SGC, days like that had been few and far between.

"So… how long does it usually take to fix a… whatever is wrong with that thing?" Elizabeth asked, glancing over Jack's shoulder, her eyes zeroing in on the transport plane beyond the windows of the waiting area and down the tarmac. She had never been overly fond of getting places by military transport, though she spent a great many hours on them when a diplomatic mission led her to a place where commercial flights just didn't go, or when the risk factor for a private plane was too high and a military escort was necessary.

"It varies, but it shouldn't be much longer," Jack said. "Eager to get away from here?" he inquired.

"The sooner we get to DC the sooner we can get the insanely long list of meetings we have waiting for us and the sooner I can get back to my people and my city," Elizabeth said. She smiled softly. "Being back… feels weird. Everything is just so different… even the little things that you don't notice day-to-day until they aren't there anymore. The bad coffee in the mess, the automatic lights, the bickering scientists, the salt air… but I miss the ocean most."

Jack smiled. "Got used to the waves at night, huh?"

"I've never needed sounds to sleep before, but now I can't seem to shut down without the ocean lulling me to sleep," Elizabeth admitted.

"Bet being locked in a mountain where it is never quiet hasn't helped," Jack said, offering up a sympathetic smile.

"No so much, no," Elizabeth said.

"You'll be back there as soon as possible, Doc. Until then… maybe look into a noise machine," Jack suggested lamely.

* * *

"Welcome to P9T-934," Sam said as her eyes scanned the terrain. 

"Not much different from Pegasus," John commented, looking around, his eyes taking in his current surroundings. Trees, grass, a river to the left of the Stargate, sky that was more or less blue—the less being the creepy green tinge that the cloudless sky had to it—and air that was as pollution-free as possible. Just like home. Atlantis, of course, being home, because somehow Earth had simply become the place that they were from, way back when, and not their home. The only thing that was different, he noted, was that the chevrons on the Stargate were red instead of the green that he was used to, and the constellations, the ones he had learned as a child, were there instead of the Pegasus Galaxy constellations that John had yet to find the time to give names to. But the changes in constellations and the colour of the chevrons went away as the 'Gate shut down behind them.

Sam shrugged. "Habitable planets generally have similar characteristics. Trees, water..." She looked around. "Not all that much different from Earth, really. Sure, you find strange things, like that planet we were on a few weeks ago with the giant purple bunny rabbits, but for the most part it's pretty much the same, at least in the broad strokes."

"Yeah, Rodney's probably said something about that somewhere along the… wait. Giant bunny rabbits?" John asked, frowning.

"Giant _purple _bunny rabbits," Daniel said.

"Right, 'cause if they weren't purple it'd be a whole different story," John said, shaking his head. He had yet to have to negotiate with giant woodland creatures of any colour, and he hoped he never had to.

Smiling, Sam moved to check on the MALP. Nothing seemed out of place or broken, so she stood back upright and nodded to the group. "Okay. Teal'c, you take point. Daniel, the aerial survey showed ruins about a mile away, so shout if you see anything… ruin-ish. John and I will take the six."

Teal'c inclined his head slightly before moving forward, his P-90 held loosely at his side, though his body held a tension that John knew all too well—Teal'c wouldn't relax until he knew his team was home, back through the Stargate, unharmed—and John respected that.

Daniel moved with practised ease across the uneven surface, roots sticking up through the soil and hundreds of large rocks making the ground rather unpleasant to walk on, but he didn't falter, not once, despite the fact that his attention was focused on the notebook he was scribbling in. Despite the fact that it looked like his notebook had his full attention, John could tell that the archaeologist was just as aware of his surroundings as everyone else. John imagined that, back when the team had first started out together, back when then-Colonel O'Neill ran SG-1 and Sam was just a Captain, things hadn't moved as smoothly, especially with the civilian archaeologist on the team, but it was obvious that Jackson was well-trained. There was something about him that made John think about boot camp, the practised actions that often carried on into the field and everyday life, and then there was the feeling, something entirely too Zen for John to wrap his head around, that told him that Daniel had spent time training with someone other than the military, quite possibly Teal'c who, John had learned through files and from Sam, had a style of fighting and living that was all his own.

And Sam began moving backwards over the rough terrain, one hand resting on her P-90, the other on what he had been told was a Zatnikatil, or Zat gun, that was basically an energy weapon that had three stages: one shot would stun the target for an indeterminate amount of time, the second shot would kill the target, and the third would disintegrate the molecules that made up the target—John had immediately put a note in his list of armaments about the weapons, hoping that they would be effective against the Wraith. Like Teal'c, Sam's body held a tension that spoke of just how alert she was, but, as always, she moved with a gentle grace that rarely went hand in hand with military issue combat boots. Having trained with her John knew that Sam had always been that way, but, knowing her as well as he did outside of military life, John also knew that Sam was just as comfortable in a dress and heels as she was in field gear and combat boots.

The three members of SG-1 worked together so efficiently, each playing a part, each a cog in what was clearly a well-oiled machine. Of course, nine years together probably helped, John mused as he thought about how sometimes AR-1 was like a group of squabbling children—Rodney wanting to check out the technology, Teyla wanting to keep up her people's trading partners, Ford wanting to bug Rodney as much as possible, and John, himself, wanting to find something, anything, that would give Atlantis a strategic advantage over the Wraith. Half the time he didn't feel that his team melded quite right, that there was something wrong there that he should be taking care of. But the rest of the time they worked together flawlessly, fighting battles side by side, winning some, losing other, but always making sure that they didn't leave anyone behind.

John let out a heavy sigh at that thought. They may not have left Ford behind, but he was still out there, not in his right mind, without his team to back him up. Sam was right. Addictions all worked the same. The first dose works for a while and then you plateau and then you start needing more to get the same jolt as before. No one knew how the Wraith enzyme worked, how fast Ford would find himself hitting one of those plateaus.

The uncertainty of it all was driving John crazy. He wasn't the type to like everything just so. He couldn't be that guy, not doing the job he did. But the not knowing… it was worse than knowing, he was sure. If Ford was in Atlantis, or even on Earth, and they were actively doing something, anything, to make him better, to bring back the young Lieutenant who had jumped through the wormhole backwards with a cheer that day that they left Earth… actually doing something would be easier, John knew. No matter how hard it was to watch, to witness, at least he would know certain facts.

Like whether or not Ford was alive.

* * *

TBC... 

Love it? Hate it? Let me know.


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

* * *

Though all she wanted was to find her hotel room and collapse into bed, to sleep for a solid twelve hours without waking every time one of the expedition members made a universal call over the headsets instead of contacting only the person they wanted to speak to—it happened more often than anyone was comfortable with, but it was difficult to control the actions of sleep-deprived, caffeine-overdosing, overworked people—Elizabeth barely had time for a quick shower before she headed for the White House for the first of many Oval Office meetings. If it was just a random politician she would have at least contemplated making some excuse, but Elizabeth wasn't going to entertain thoughts of skipping out on the President of the United States. Not to mention the IOA delegates (though much lower echelon, so as not to attract unwanted attention) from Britain, China, Russia, Germany, and France; the major powers involved in the Atlantis expedition. Meetings involving all of the other countries in the alliance would come later, of course, but the continued support of the nuclear powers was Elizabeth's main concern.

Normally Stargate-related meetings were held in ultimate secrecy, but, since Elizabeth had had meetings in the Oval Office with three different presidents over varying matters, no one would think twice about seeing her name in the minute-by-minute log of the President's day. And, considering the other parties that would be attending the meeting, it could easily be explained away by the fact that she had brokered hundreds of treaties between the world powers over the course of her career and she was simply continuing after a year's sabbatical.

After taking a quick shower and changing into a suit left over from her diplomat days—her suits from her days as a professor at Georgetown were slightly less strict, less professional, and, as she often had when she was a diplomat, she wanted the armour that was provided by her diplomat suits—Elizabeth went down to the café in the lobby of the hotel, her sight set on coffee, strong and sweet, hoping that it would keep her awake long enough to not offend anyone important. She just hoped that she had enough time to get at least two cups of coffee into her system before Jack arrived to take her to the White House.

The coffee at the café was pretty terrible, but Elizabeth sucked down two cups and was adding sugar to her third when Jack showed up, casually taking the seat across the table from her. "You look uncomfortable," Elizabeth commented idly while stirring the sweetener into her coffee, hoping to make it taste better.

"It's the uniform," Jack replied, frowning down at his Class A uniform. "Worst part of the job."

Elizabeth had to admit that she was feeling something similar with regards to her staid black suit—BDU pants and a tee shirt made for much more comfortable work attire, especially now that she was used to going from her casual work uniform to her pyjamas and back; a few annoyingly memorable off-world negotiations and rituals notwithstanding, of course. (She still didn't fully understand why she had had to wear the itchy burlap-like mini-shift of a dress on M2L-492 or why every inch of her skin, even the skin covered by her clothes, had to be covered with the tree sap and mud mixture—that made her break out in a horrible case of hives, thank you very much—on P8Z-119) And, while she had been comfortable in her usually (but not always, and certainly not exclusively) sensible heels, in just the few minutes that her feet had been in what had once been her favourite pair of low-heeled black pumps she had already slipped the shoes off twice, her feet begging for the familiarity of the hiking boots that she usually wore in lieu of the combat boots that most of her expedition favoured.

"So… who are we trying to wow today?" Jack asked. Though Elizabeth knew that Jack had been told who they were meeting with, she knew that he hadn't exactly been focused on the conversation at the time (there had been some kind of accident with the X-302 manufacturing process that, apparently put them behind schedule, and that had take up most of his attention until he had figured out a way to resolve the problem… which, as far as Elizabeth could tell, was simply to just keep cranking the fighters out as fast as possible and the deliveries would be in two parts instead of all at once. She understood the problems that came with being in charge—often times she spent hours, even days, having the same conversation with someone over and over again because her mind had wandered to other crises (concern for off-world teams, mental reminders to check on injured personnel) for a second and she had missed critical information that she needed to be made aware of.

"Representatives from the nuclear powers of the Alliance countries," Elizabeth replied. "And I doubt we'll be doing much 'wowing', Jack, at least not for the next few days."

"Oh, I don't know 'bout that. Just make sure that you give a good story of someone from their country saving the lives of ten or more people and there will definitely be… wow… type stuff… going on," Jack said. "You've got good stories on quite a few, don't you? Like, their people saved the world or something, right?"

Elizabeth arched an eyebrow at the General. "You're saying I should, what? Accentuate the heroic actions of their people to convince them to give us more support?"

"Something along those lines," Jack said. Elizabeth frowned and Jack nodded reluctantly. "I realize that flattery doesn't get you everywhere, especially in international politics. But it certainly can't hurt, right? And, who knows. Maybe it'll grease the wheels a little, to utilize another cliché."

"Yeah, maybe," Elizabeth admitted. She finished her coffee in one long sip, still not loving the taste but feeling much more energized than she had when she arrived at the hotel. "We should go," she said, knowing that they had a fair length drive ahead of them and a lot of traffic to get through. From where she sat she could see that the cherry blossoms were in bloom in the Capitol and, therefore, the influx of tourists would be massive, especially around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Jack nodded. "We should," he agreed as he got to his feet. He looked at Elizabeth carefully. "You okay? We can probably push this thing back until morning. I'm sure everyone'll understand."

"I'm fine, Jack," Elizabeth said.

"The dark circles under your eyes say differently," Jack pointed out as he dropped a few bills on the table to cover Elizabeth's coffees.

"With charm like that it's almost hard to believe that you're not in a relationship," Elizabeth said dryly.

"I know," Jack agreed good-naturedly. "One of the great mysteries of the universe."

* * *

"So, how long are you back for?" Sam asked.

"Assuming the Powers That Be don't pull me off the expedition, the **Daedalus **should be back here in a little under two weeks. Caldwell's people get a few days leave, then we're heading back to Pegasus," John said.

She had heard everything John had said, but her mind was stuck on the first point. "They want to pull you?" Sam asked, frowning.

"I'm just remaining realistic about the whole thing. I don't want to leave Atlantis, but I realize that it is beyond my control." John shrugged. "I don't know for sure, but I do know that I only got to go in the first place because Elizabeth played General O'Neill," he said.

Sam shook her head, chuckling. "If General O'Neill didn't want you to go you would not have stepped through the 'Gate," she said. "Whatever protests he may have put up were token at best."

"What do you mean? He had to have had problems with my file," John said.

"I'm sure he did," Sam said. "I read your file last night," she added with a disapproving frown. "What were you thinking in Afghanistan?"

Exhaling sharply, John rolled his eyes. "My guys were in trouble. I did what I had to do to get them home safely. The Brass had some trouble with my actions, but other than putting that damn black mark on my file, they couldn't do anything. Even when I was doing it I walked the line enough that they couldn't Court Marshall me. It wasn't exactly my intention at the time, and I would have gone as far as I had to if it meant getting my people back, but I got lucky and I didn't have to actually break any of the rules or laws, just bend them a little." He looked at Sam, his hazel eyes piercing hers. "Don't even pretend that you wouldn't have done exactly the same thing if you were in my position."

"Probably not _exactly _the same thing, but, yeah, sure, I would do anything to get my people home," Sam admitted.

"Thank you!" John said, relieved. "Why does no one want to admit that they would do the same thing when any leader worth anything would do what it takes to make sure that no one gets left behind."

Sam nodded. "And that attitude, right there, is why General O'Neill signed off on you going to Atlantis," she said. "He lives by a code, and the number one rule is simple. No one gets left behind." Sam smiled softly at John. "If SG-1 wasn't about to scatter to several points in the universe I'd say, if you are pulled, you're welcome here… but this is one of our last missions before we split up."

"You're… scattering?" John asked. From all he'd heard SG-1 was the team that stayed together no matter what.

"Yeah," Sam nodded. "Teal is going to work on creating a unified Jaffa government for the freed Jaffa. Daniel finally convinced enough people that he's needed in Atlantis, so he's going to join you on the **Daedalus **when you guys head back to Pegasus—apparently your head of archaeology is woefully out of his depth when it comes to Ancient artefacts and Doctor Weir hopes that Daniel will be able to at least help figure out some of the things that have big question marks hanging over them. And I am about to leave for Area 51. I'll be heading up R-and-D. I don't know what General Landry is going to do about the team—I don't think he even knows at the moment. After this mission we're just going to go to a few planets where we have close relationships with the people or beings, then SG-1 as we know it is no more."

John stopped walking. "You're giving up field work?"

"Not _all _field work, just… just daily 'Gate travel," Sam said. She frowned. "Why does it seem like that bothers you?"

"You mean besides the fact that we are in serious need of capable warriors who can understand what McKay and his minions say?" John asked. "I've come to agree with General O'Neill on the subject."

Sam frowned. "What subject?"

Starting their slow patrol of the ruins again, John said, "After Elizabeth asked me to go with them, the General tried to talk me into it. I was… well, reluctant."

"Understandably so," Sam nodded.

"I thought so," John agreed. "He asked me why I became a pilot. I told him—because I think that people who don't want to fly are crazy. He smiled and told me that he thought that people who didn't want to go through the 'Gate were—and this is a direct quote—equally as whacked."

Sam smiled. "That sounds about right."

* * *

As expected day one of their White House meeting extravaganza had been, by and large, focused on fleshing out the flash data message that they had sent from Atlantis a few weeks earlier. Elizabeth had been somewhat put off by the fact that they hadn't actually met with President Hayes, especially after she had been told that he was who she would be meeting with and she had prepared herself accordingly, but she had been diplomatic as ever, making sure that the liaison for the United States didn't know how she felt when he showed up in the basement meeting room that she and Jack had gone into, Jack leading the way without a word once they cleared security.

Still, despite the fact that they hadn't covered any material that she hadn't already gone over with the SGC, and ignoring the fact that instead of meeting in the Oval with the President she had been shunted down to the basement of the White House with the American attaché to the Pegasus Project—an uninventive codename that Elizabeth was hardly impressed with, though, again, she kept that to herself—the meeting went well, certainly better than the original meeting with representatives of the major world powers had gone back when General Hammond and Major Davis had disclosed the secrets of the Stargate while fighting with then-Senator Kinsey. Of course, Earth had come a long way since then, and the shock of the secret and the truth of the power of the Stargate had, for the most part, worn off. There was still some grumpiness from the Chinese ambassador, a touch of disbelief from both the British and the French ambassadors, and gentle amusement with the whole situation from Colonel Chekov from Russia, but, for the most part, the meeting had been very cordial, even when the death toll of the siege was brought up.

Which, really, was information that Elizabeth had been incredibly worried about relaying. It was, after all, the only new information that was being given, the only new information, really, and, despite the fact that they had snuck by with a tentative and fragile win against the Wraith, the numbers were hardly something to brag about.

Still, even though her report was hardly sharing the boon to intergalactic progress that the Atlantis mission had started out as, Elizabeth felt that, on the whole, the meeting had gone well. No arguments had broken out, no one had threatened to pull out of the alliance, and, for a room full of politicians, there was very little posturing going on. Which was amazing.

Even so, Elizabeth knew that they hadn't gotten to the hard part yet.

"That went well," Jack said as they got into the car.

"It didn't go well, it just didn't go badly," Elizabeth corrected as the car lurched forward, working it way out of the White House compound.

Jack frowned at Elizabeth. "You get pessimistic when you're tired."

"I passed 'tired' about a year ago, Jack," Elizabeth said dryly.

"I've got about a decade on you, Elizabeth, but I know how you feel," Jack said. "Look, while you're in DC just pretend that you're not the leader of this expedition or the commander of the city. While you're here just imagine that you're just taking these meetings as a representative of the Stargate Program trying to get the support we need."

Shaking her head, Elizabeth shifted in her seat. "If I think like that I'll start panicking that I'm being replaced or something. No, I think I'll stick with my _realistic_ viewpoint on the matter at hand, thank you very much," Elizabeth replied.

"You have no imagination, Doc," Jack said, shaking his head in disapproval.

"I haven't been accused of that since grade school, Jack, and that was a very unpleasant unpublished writer who I had the misfortune of having as a teacher for my creative writing class."

"Didn't think you had creative talent?" John asked.

"Didn't think anyone who hadn't published eighteen novels that landed on the best-seller list had talent," Elizabeth said. "Of course, the crotchety old coot had to go and die before I had my books hit the best-seller list."

"Yeah, but A Modern Treaty on the Struggle Against Arms Proliferation isn't exactly on many people's Christmas list, though," Jack pointed out.

Elizabeth eyed Jack sceptically. "Don't tell me you've actually read my books."

"A few months after we started going through the 'Gate Daniel decided I needed to brush up on my… diplomacy skills… which, I admit, are somewhat lacking," Jack said awkwardly. "He gave me a bunch of books, yours included." He shrugged. "There are only so many games of chess you can play against yourself while recovering for assorted alien maladies."

"Remind me to introduce you to the world of computer solitaire," Elizabeth said, shaking her head in amusement.

* * *

TBC...

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	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

* * *

Even though she had spent most of her life travelling, living with so many different cultures that varied from each other in so many ways that it made her head spin at times, Elizabeth was having trouble acclimating to life on Earth after a year in Pegasus. 

All the people, the chaos, it reminded her of the panic of the siege or, during one particularly bad rainstorm, the Genii raid on Atlantis. The sound of traffic (especially rush hour with all the honking horns and nearly palpable anger) brought the sounds of Wraith darts to her mind, making her fingers itch for a weapon, any weapon, from the gun the nearest guard had holstered at his hip to the butter knife sitting beside her plate—a desire that, in and of itself, was troubling and more than a little strange considering she had gone though both the Genii raid and the Wraith siege completely unarmed, and, while she knew how to shoot a gun if needed (John had seen to that early on) and knew the basics of fighting with a knife (Teyla had been training her, though their schedules rarely lined up and Elizabeth's knee often gave her too much trouble to do the moves that the Athosian instructed her to do) Elizabeth knew that defending herself against the things that she felt were attacking her on Earth the way her instincts were telling her to was among the worst ideas ever. Gunning down people who walked up behind her on the street or attacking the waiter with a butter knife because he had long white hair would get her locked up, Elizabeth knew, and she would never see her city again.

Which was completely unacceptable.

Being at the SGC had been a change, for sure, but it wasn't entirely different from home (security, military types, scientists, John and Rodney and Carson, a few other people that she was close to, a lot of people she knew well enough to have a conversation with but wasn't close to) so Elizabeth had been able to deal with being in the mountain, though there were some changes that were so glaring (being underground instead of being on top of the ocean, not being in charge, no balcony to escape to, no ocean waves or salty breeze to lull her to sleep) that she had to make a conscious decision not to think about them. Besides, the SGC was safe, she didn't need to monitor what she said, she could say 'Atlantis' and not have people look at her like she was crazy, and no one thought that it was strange that she was a little jumpy from time to time—everyone at the SGC had been through _something _that haunted them, it was an accepted part of the job that no one liked but everyone dealt with.

But DC…

Elizabeth had always adapted well. She could go from a snow-bound negotiation to the desert heat with little more than a flight and a change of wardrobe. She could pack up her life in a matter of hours and move halfway around the world if the job required that of her. Hell, she had left her home galaxy with little more than a few days notice after Daniel had figured out that Atlantis was in the Pegasus Galaxy and not, as they had expected, the Milky Way.

Still, Elizabeth was finding that she had a new appreciation for quiet.

She never thought that she would consider life around Rodney McKay and John Sheppard 'quiet', but she had discovered that the lack of quiet that they brought to her life was much easier to deal with than the incessant noise of life on Earth.

On their third full day of meetings, her fourth day in DC, her breakfast order of room service had come with a bottle of extra-strength Advil and a note from Jack—he had, somehow, managed to cancel their morning meetings and he expected her to be well-rested and tension free by the time he came to pick her up at lunch. Under the plate that her egg-white omelette with havarti and avocado there was an envelope with a list of spa treatments that were available in the time she had off, along with a note that simply said 'call John'.

Curiosity beat out morning hunger, and Elizabeth called John from her SGC cell phone. She knew it was early in Colorado, but she also knew John well enough to know that, if he wasn't already awake, he would be soon and wouldn't mind the wake-up call.

Three rings later Elizabeth was greeted by an out-of-breath utterance. "_Sheppard,_" John said, breathing heavily.

"Did I interrupt something?" Elizabeth asked, alarmed, thoughts of the closeness shared between John and Samantha Carter flashing through her very active imagination—despite the assurances she had been offered before leaving the SGC.

"_Morning run,_" John said, still breathing heavily and completely oblivious to the reasons for the tension in Elizabeth's tone. "_What's up?_" he asked before taking a long draw from the water bottle he'd brought with him on his run.

"You and Jack are in cahoots," Elizabeth accused.

"_I honestly have no idea what you're talking about, Elizabeth, but if I did I'm sure I would have a witty retort to your accusation,_" John said.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "Seriously, John. First I get a note from Jack saying that our morning meetings have been cancelled, then I get a pamphlet for the hotel spa with a note saying to 'call John'. You two are in cahoots."

"_Okay… first of all I don't think you should say 'cahoots' anymore. Ever,"_ John said seriously._ "Second, I really don't know what you're talking about—I wish I did, but I don't. And third, you do realize that it's four in the morning here, right?_"

"Yeah, well, you're already up and running, literally, so it's not like I pulled you away from lusty dreams of Carmen Elektra or anything."

"_She's not my type,_" John replied automatically. "_So… again I ask… what's up? And don't you dare say anything about me being in cahoots with the General. In fact, take it step by step. It is only four in the morning for me, remember?_"

Rolling her eyes again, Elizabeth said, "Jack cancelled our morning meetings."

"_Okay, I'm with you so far,_" John said.

"And I got an envelope with my breakfast with a list of spa treatments available in the time I have off today," Elizabeth continued while looking the list over, mentally scheduling as many treatments as she could in the few hours she had away from the world of intergalactic diplomacy. It had been a long time since she had treated herself to something to frivolous and utterly girly as a spa day—half day, technically—that Elizabeth was determined to make the most of it. Still, she was disappointed that she didn't have any girlfriends around to go with, spa days being much more fun with friends around. Elizabeth made a mental note to bring Teyla to Earth sometime to do the girly bonding thing that was so incredibly hard to do while running a city and fighting a war that had been raging for ten thousand years or more.

"_That's handy,_" John commented.

Elizabeth frowned. Either John was a better actor than she knew or he truly didn't know what was going on. She wasn't sure which option was more appealing. "Isn't it thought?" Elizabeth replied. "In the envelope with the list was a note."

"_And what did the note say?_" John inquired cautiously.

"Call John," Elizabeth said.

There was a long pause before John spoke again. "_That's it? 'Call John'? No wistful poetry, no secret admirer bullshit, nothing to indicate the sender?_"

"Honestly, I thought that you had sent it," Elizabeth said.

"_Hence your slightly indignant insistence that General O'Neill and I are in cahoots._"

"I was not indignant," Elizabeth protested. John laughed, the deep, resonating sound of his laughter a balm to a soul-deep wound Elizabeth didn't even know existed. "Okay, maybe I was a little indignant. But I thought two people I consider close friends were ganging up on me."

"_Ganging up on you… to give you a day at the spa..._" John said slowly. "_What atrocious friends we must be, to wish something so terrible upon you when you haven't taken more than five minutes for yourself in as long as we've known you._"

Elizabeth smiled widely. "You _are _in cahoots with Jack!" she exclaimed.

"_Just a little,_" John said sheepishly. "_But you deserve a day off, __Elizabeth__. You deserve a lot more than that, but it took a lot of work to swing a few hours. And, for the record, this conspiracy goes beyond just myself and the General. Samantha, Doctor Jackson, and Carson were in on it, too. They ended up doing most of the hard work—apparently I'm not globally renowned like they are. Samantha managed to score a deal with President Hayes and Carson, apparently, has quite the relationship with the bigwigs in the __British Isles__. General O'Neill claims that the Russian ambassador was fine with taking the whole day; something about cherry blossoms and national monuments. And __Jackson__… well, he basically swayed everyone else. Seriously, watching the guy work… if he's half as good at dealing with people on an intergalactic scale as he is on a global one… life is going to be a lot easier when we get home._"

"I can't believe you guys did this for me. This is so incredibly sweet," Elizabeth said.

John cleared his throat, feeling more than somewhat awkward about what he was about to say. "_Well… I can't speak for everyone… but, speaking for me… you definitely deserve it. And more. And, I realize I haven't exactly taken great strides in making your life easier… so… thank you for putting up with me… and sorry for… all the crap I make you put up with._"

* * *

The Lantian delegation had been on Earth for nine days when Carson left for home to see his mother and the rest of his family and friends. John had suggested to Rodney that he look up his sister who he'd sent the tape to when everyone was saying goodbye to their loved ones, but Rodney had let out an unintelligible growl before hunching over a laptop, his spine curved at an angle that made John's back ache in sympathy. It wasn't until later that John found out that Rodney's message had been among the data that was garbled by the compression codec and therefore had never reached his sister. 

Sam was off-world on one of the wrap-up missions she'd said she had to go on, making sure that relations with other worlds would continue despite the fact that the main team would no longer be going through the 'Gate, and Elizabeth was still in DC. John hadn't heard from Elizabeth since their talk the day she'd had the morning off, though General O'Neill was sending updates to General Landry, which were shared at briefings that John attended.

Which, really, seemed to be all that John was doing. Attending briefings, hearing about the things his friends were doing, and spending a lot of time wandering the incredibly dull military-grey halls of the SGC. He'd wandered into a science lab by accident and, intrigued by the equations on the white board, had stayed to study them, finding a flaw and fixing it out of habit, and when the scientist whose lab John was in found him tinkering with the math on the board he was less than pleased. Until, of course, he discovered that John had solved the problem he had been having and that the reason his prototype wasn't working was that his calculations were so incredibly off that he was lucky he hadn't blown up the entire complex. After that John had learned to avoid the floors with the science labs on them, unless he was with Sam, because word had gotten around and suddenly every scientist on base wanted the math whiz Major Sheppard to do something for them, too. Not because they couldn't do the math themselves, either, but because they all had some perverse desire to see John's math skills in action. And, while John liked numbers, he didn't like being a freak show exhibit. Besides, there was a reason he never went beyond masters in the courses of applied mathematics and practical mathematical theorem that he had taken between years at the Academy.

He had wanted to hold off on going into town until his friends could join him—he had promised Elizabeth that he would show her his old haunts, had planned to go out for some classic American cuisine and excellent imported beer with Rodney and Carson, and he and Sam had lists of movies that they wanted to watch and pick to pieces together—but, with everyone he was willing, if not eager, to spend time with busy doing other things, whether they be work related to personal, John was so incredibly bored that he was almost tempted to volunteer to take a few days leading a security detail on one of the scientific outposts that the SGC had set up, if only to get out of the Mountain for a few minutes.

Which was saying a lot since John had gone to some pretty creative lengths to avoid scientist babysitting detail over the past year.

Knowing that Rodney needed to leave the Mountain sometime—he had hardly left his lab since the whole debriefing nightmare ended, and then only to go to the Commissary or to his quarters for a few hours of sleep—John decided it was time, as Rodney's best friend (and to be honest John wasn't exactly sure when that had happened, becoming Rodney's best friend, but John knew that it was true and, though he had yet to admit it aloud, the same was true in reverse) to take action.

"Hey, Rodney. I'm going into town to pick up some things. Wanna come along?" John asked, leaning against the counter just inside Rodney's temporary laboratory.

John knew that such a simple invitation wouldn't work, but, with Rodney, John had learned, it was easiest to deal with him in a certain way. Starting off easy and working his way up to a direct order—though John doubted it would get that far, considering his secret weapon—was always much more effective with Rodney than simply ordering him to do something. The civilian scientist often balked at the fact that he was being ordered around, which was why it was easier to use what he and Elizabeth had termed the 'sliding increments of authority'.

"I'm busy," Rodney said, not looking up from the device he was working on. John had heard about Sam's little outburst with the Canadian before they left for P9T-934 about the Ancient plunger—John's internal cheer of vindication when he found out that he had been right about the device had, wisely, remained entirely internal—and since then Rodney had become even more reclusive than usual, which was, honestly, beginning to worry John.

"I get that," John nodded. "But you haven't been out of the Mountain since we got here. Whatever you're working on will keep for a few hours."

"I highly doubt that. This is very important work, Sheppard," Rodney said.

"I'm sure it is," John said, placating the irritable genius. "Fine, I'll leave you to your _very important _work," he said, making a move to leave. He stopped, turning around again to face his teammmate. "You wouldn't happen to know the way to the Memorial Park area, would you? It's been a while since I've been in the States, let alone Colorado Springs, and I promised Samantha I'd stop by her house, check on things for her, while she's off-world."

The ploy worked, just like John knew it would, and Rodney finally looked up from his project. "Memorial Park? Yeah, I think I know where that is," the Canadian said. John was fairly sure Rodney had no clue where Memorial Park was, let alone how to get there from Cheyenne Mountain, but, fortunately, John knew Colorado Springs about as well as he knew Atlantis—the unexplored parts of the lost city being the parts of Colorado Springs that had changed since he had graduated from the Academy.

"So, you coming?" John asked.

Rodney looked down at himself, then at his watch, then back down at himself. "I've been working for thirty hours or so," he said.

"Go take a shower. I'll be in the Commissary when you're ready to go," John said, pleased with how easy it had been to get Rodney out of the lab.

Nodding, Rodney backed up his data before shutting his computer down and leaving the lab. Once John was sure that Rodney was, in fact, heading for the locker rooms he headed for the Commissary to wait for Rodney to be ready to leave.

Though John knew he should be feeling at least a little guilty about using Rodney's hopeless crush on Sam to get some company on his shopping trip, he didn't let himself register any guilt-related feelings. He would save those for the next time he saw Sam.

"Major, a subspace message just came in," Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman said as he fell in step beside John.

"From the **Daedalus**?" John asked, hoping that he had hid the fact that the short 'Gate technician had scared him, appearing out of nowhere the way that he had—the way that John noticed he had a tendency to do whenever he was away from the Control Room.

"Yes, sir," Walter said. "Colonel Caldwell reported that the hyperdrive is down; they're moving on sublight engines at the moment."

John sighed. "But they made it though the dead space between the galaxies, right?"

"Not quite, sir. Colonel Caldwell's message was relayed through the span to the Delta Site, our closest outpost to the edge of the Milky Way."

"So… the message is a little dated," John surmised.

"Only by a few hours, Major."

"Okay. So… I assume that the Asgard… Haemorrhoid… is working on the hyperdrive," john said.

"Hermiod, sir, and yes," Walter said. "But your return to Atlantis..."

"Is going to be delayed," John said with a nod.

"Yes, sir," Walter said.

"Alright. Thank you, Chief," John said, effectively dismissing Walter who nodded and peeled off, heading back to the Control Room.

John sighed heavily. " Elizabeth is not going to be happy about this," he said to himself.

* * *

TBC...

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	9. Chapter 9

_As a happy birthday to myself, I decided to post this chapter earlier than planned. This wasn't supposed to come out until next week, but the number of reviews have been low so I decided to post another chapter in hopes of prompting more reviews as a birthday present to myself. Feedback is the best present, after all _;)

_Manic Penguin_

* * *

CHAPTER 9

* * *

Because her everyday uniform was fairly unchanging (black pants, red top, grey and red jacket if she was cold, any variety coming in the length of her sleeves and the thickness of the fabric to adjust for variables in temperature) Elizabeth had all but forgotten what it was like to actually have to select something to wear, and the fact that she had to go shopping to make that selection made her life even more difficult. Though she knew she should have anticipated it, she hadn't come to Washington prepared for a formal event, and had run into a brief moment of panic when she realized that all of her credit cards had been cancelled before she left Earth. 

Fortunately Jack had seen her plight, the look of panic in her eyes reminding him of years ago, back before he knew about aliens and Stargates and the location of the lost city of Atlantis, back when finding time alone with his wife while spending time with his young son and not allowing himself to go soft in the field had been his life, a pleasant existence, though one long lost, never to be recaptured.

Momentarily distracted from the sea of luxurious fabrics, Elizabeth thoughts wandered back to earlier that afternoon.

* * *

_FLASHBACK _

_As they left the Pentagon, where their last sit-down meeting of the day had been held, Jack offered up a smile. "You look just like Sara did when I told her she needed to buy herself a ball gown," he said. _

_"Sara?" __Elizabeth__ frowned, the name not ringing any bells. _

_"My ex-wife," Jack said. "I'm guessing that this shindig tonight was not on your itinerary." _

_"Hardly. I had big plans. I've got an appointment with Mario at eight that I'm going to have to cancel now," she said, scowling. Jack arched an eyebrow at her and mouthed 'Mario' in question. "The hotel masseuse," she added. "I did something to my back during the thing," __Elizabeth__ explained, referring to the recent siege on Atlantis, "and I was hoping a good massage would help. Cheaper than a chiropractor." _

_Jack smiled. "And instead you have to get dressed up and stand around in high heels for hours on end with boring politicians who want to live vicariously through you while trying to find ways to avoid giving you the funding you need." _

_Groaning in protest, __Elizabeth__ cringed. "I think I've forgotten how to walk in heels." It was enough of a challenge to walk in the low daytime heels she wore with her suits. _

_"Well, in that area I can't help," Jack said. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a credit card. "But I can help with the actual purchasing of whatever you'll need for tonight—something tells me that you didn't pack a White House appropriate dress in that carry-on you brought with you." _

_"I didn't bring a dress, period, Jack," __Elizabeth__ said, gratefully taking the credit card. "Who is my generous benefactor?" she asked, looking at the nondescript card, just like all the ones she had cut up before leaving the galaxy. _

_"Your expense account," Jack replied. Elizabeth looked at him, shocked, and he shrugged, not offering any further explanation. "There's a ten thousand dollar limit, but it's gotta last you until you head back to _the city _so go easy. I'll pick you up at your hotel at seven," he said as they reached his car, a young airman waiting to drive him where ever he wanted to go. Elizabeth nodded and Jack got into the car, immediately hitting the button to roll down the window. "Oh, and __Elizabeth__?" Jack called through the open window. "Make sure you rebook with Mario for tomorrow night. I'll make sure you don't have to cancel again." _

_END FLASHBACK_

_

* * *

_

"Is there anything I can help you find, ma'am?" a twenty-something blonde woman asked, drawing Elizabeth out of her memory.

"Uh… I need a gown," Elizabeth said. She smiled softly. "Obviously," she added, seeing as the boutique she was in sold nothing but gowns.

Twenty-Something smiled back. "For a specific event?"

"Black-tie dinner party. Governmental," Elizabeth said, her tone letting the other woman know that she was not at all thrilled at the prospect. She had been to hundreds of black-tie dinner parties during her career, all of them as boring as the last, and she didn't relish the thought of going to on when she was exhausted, nursing a growing headache, and valiantly trying not to think about the massage she had had to cancel that she had hoped would temporarily cure her back pain.

"Alright. When is this dinner party?" Twenty-Something asked.

Elizabeth let out a heavy sigh. "Tonight." Twenty-Something arched an eyebrow at Elizabeth. "It's a work thing. I didn't find out I was required to attend until an hour ago."

"Okay… well, why don't I take a few quick measurements and we'll go from there," Twenty-Something said. "You realize that you won't be able to be very picky on such short notice, right?"

"Never really been the picky type," Elizabeth said as she followed Twenty-Something toward the back of the store, shedding her coat and suit jacket along the way.

"Good to hear," Twenty-Something said as she grabbed a measuring tape and a sheet of paper to note Elizabeth's measurements on.

Ten minutes later Twenty-Something headed off in search of dresses in Elizabeth's size while Elizabeth took the chance to check in with the SGC.

After jumping through fifteen different hoops Elizabeth was patched through to John, which she was thankful for, considering all the scheduled missions he was signed up for with various SG teams. _"Hey, it's our fearless leader," _John said by way of greeting. _"How's life with the sharks and minions of the devil?"_

"Same as usual," Elizabeth said. "How are things back there?"

_"Same 'ol, same 'ol. Caldwell's having some trouble with his baby so he's still over a week away, but other than that nothing to report," _John said. Though her cell phone had more security protocols than the average Radio Shack piece of hardened plastic and wiring, the line was still more or less unsecured, leaving them little choice but to speak in carefully couched sentences and loose code.

Elizabeth frowned. "Anything serious?" she asked, worried that they wouldn't be able to get back to Pegasus if the **Daedalus** was having trouble making the trip.

_"Nothing for you to worry about," _John said in his most reassuring tone. _"What's with the elevator music?"_ he asked.

The music in the boutique was not good, Elizabeth had to admit, and she didn't recognize any of the songs that had played over the sound system since she had arrived—though she figured that they had simply been released since she had been away. Crinkling her nose, Elizabeth said, "I'm shopping for a ball gown. No one told me I was going to be roped into a black tie affair while I was here. I haven't had such short notice since my cousin eloped—and even then I had a full ten hours to find a dress, shoes, get my hair done, and take care of all the other stuff I needed to do."

_"It's moments like these I'm thankful that I've never had to worry about what to wear to those stick-up-your-ass shindigs. Dust off the dress uniform, shine the shoes, I'm ready in thirty minutes,"_ John said.

"Yeah, well, that's nice for you. You don't have to worry about getting your legs waxed," Elizabeth said bitterly, once again wondering what procedure Teyla used to keep her legs smooth in her skirts that were slit clear to the hip and if it was anywhere near as painful as the waxing session she had scheduled herself for in two hours time.

_"And hopefully I never will,"_ John replied.

Elizabeth laughed, an honest-to-god laugh, something she hadn't allowed herself to do in far too long, and, not for the first time, she thanked whatever divine being had brought John Sheppard into her life. He was the only person who could make her smile most days, a true smile, not the polite one she had mastered over years of diplomatic missions and dealing with various politicians, and she could think of very few genuinely happy memories in the past ten months or so that didn't include John in some way.

"Thank you," she said, the smile still on her face but her laughter gone, for the moment at least. She knew that she didn't have to explain what she was thanking him for. She knew that he would know automatically.

_"Anytime,"_ John said, and Elizabeth's smile brightened because she could actually hear the corresponding smile coming across in John's voice. _"So how are the meetings going, seriously?"_ John asked. _"Samantha said something about Landry being pleased, but she didn't have time to go into specifics before she headed off with Doctor Jackson and the big guy."_

Though she noted that John had used Daniel's salutation despite the archaeologist's instance that just Daniel was fine, and that, though she had seen John and Teal'c sparring in the SGC's gym, he had called him 'the big guy', while referring to Sam Carter, a superior officer, as 'Samantha', Elizabeth refused to allow the niggling thoughts, the ones that had plagued her since she put the dots together and realized that John had named his plane after Colonel Carter, to really dig in. She was actually starting to take on a more cheerful outlook on the rest of the day, if only because things were going well in her meetings so far and, at least for the next few hours, John was staying on Earth and therefore it was unlikely that he would get himself in any way injured, kidnapped, beaten, or killed, and Elizabeth wasn't about to let go of that cheerful outlook, not when she had several hours of politicians and military types trying to live vicariously through her adventures—and misadventures—in the Pegasus Galaxy to look forward to.

"The meetings are going well. So far we've managed to get approval for increased funding for scientific research for both bases, as well as most of the weapons and armaments that you and Lieutenant Ford cited in your report as viable defences against our new enemies," Elizabeth said, uttering the last part softer so that no one overheard her. The boutique was empty other than herself and Twenty-Something, and the blonde was on the other side of the store with a wheeled rack that already had several dresses hanging off of it, but, still, she was cautious. "General O'Neill and I still have a few more days of back-to-back meetings, plus the work we're going to have to do tonight to gain more allies on various governments' appropriations committees, but so far this trip has been a success."

_"Leg waxing notwithstanding,"_ John deadpanned.

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes, even though there was nearly two thousand kilometres between them and John had no way of knowing that she was glaring at him.

_"Look, I've gotta go. Rodney and I are going to head into town; some of our orders have come in, but we've got to pick them up in person, the Air Force didn't want to foot the bill for delivery on top of all our other 'petty needs',"_ John said. Elizabeth could tell he was rolling his eyes—he had when she had first told him about how the Brass thought that the list of music, movies, sporting equipment, video games, and games was a bunch of whining and the petty needs of the Atlantis expedition would not be met. Thankfully General Landry, and probably General O'Neill as well, Elizabeth surmised, judging by the amount of hockey and fishing paraphernalia had been requisitioned, had managed to work it so that almost all of the 'petty needs' of the Atlantis expedition were met. The subscriptions to several magazines had been vetoed, as well as the request for an air hockey table—Elizabeth wasn't sure who had put that one on the list, but she had to say she wasn't sad to see that it was vetoed; there was not that much room in their designated recreational areas, though, she supposed, more areas could be designated for recreation once they checked more of the city over with their new members and the ZPM. _"I'm probably going to head to a bookstore while Rodney makes sure all the tech crap is up to snuff. Any requests? Keep in mind I refuse to purchase any bodice rippers for you—you'll have to stock up on those for yourself."_

"I don't read bodice rippers, John," Elizabeth said, refusing to admit to her secret addiction to the aggrandized storylines of romance novels. "Just pick anything you think I'll like. Just try to avoid anything too heavy on the topics of death and war—I read to unwind and get away from real life, not be reminded of it right before I go to sleep. And nothing too light. I like there to be a plot to a story, not just random characters running around pointlessly."

_"Got it. Something light, but not cotton-candy fluff,"_ John affirmed. He sighed heavily. _"I'm gonna look like an idiot when I pick up our movies."_

That brought a smile back to Elizabeth's face. They had ordered movies from several different suppliers, and most had been willing to ship them up to the Mountain for free, but one store had refused to budge on their shipping policies and it just so happened that all the movies that they had ordered from that supplier were starring George Clooney—for Teyla, and over half the other females on Atlantis. "Hey, it's your Air Force. If they'd just been willing to pay the, what was it? Ten dollar shipping charge on a two thousand dollar order? If they'd just paid that you wouldn't have to look like some obsessed fan-boy," Elizabeth smiled.

_"Yeah, well my Air Force wouldn't have to watch every cent they spend if it weren't for you and your anti-military-spending activism,"_ John replied, his voice light and teasing. They had playfully bantered about their respective views on the military hundreds of times since they met; there was no animosity there for either of them.

"Well, I should let you go. You've got a lot of shopping to do, and I've got to get a dress, shoes, do something with my hair, and endure a torture session before Jack picks me up tonight," Elizabeth said.

John coughed. _"You've got a date to this last minute party thing?"_

"Yep. And you know him, too. Tall, grey hair, quick wit, likes hockey and fishing, dogs are his favourite people," Elizabeth said. John remained silent. "I'm going with General O'Neill, John, and it's not a date." She smiled softly. "Why does it matter to you either way?"

_"It doesn't,"_ John said quickly.

"If you say so," Elizabeth said, trying to deny how pleased she was by the fact that, for whatever reason, John was bothered by the thought that she had a date for a DC snore-fest of a party.

* * *

TBC... 

Love it? Hate it? Review please...


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

* * *

John had to admit that he had been mildly surprised with the house that Sam lived in. When he and Sam had lived together their place had been, for lack of a better term, a hole. Shag carpeting, sticky windows, bad plumbing, and a questionable landlord, not to mention no A/C and heating that was intermittent at best. Still, despite its faults, it had been home, and they had tried to make it less gross and creepy, but their limited budgets had made that difficult. 

Sam's house, however, was nothing like the apartment that had been John's first truly happy home. The floors were hardwood with decorative area rugs in abstract patterns that accented the furniture. The style of the décor was modern, though the house had some classic touches to it in the architecture that produced an intriguing dichotomy that shouldn't have worked but did none the less.

If it weren't for all the boxes that contained most of her belongings the house would have definitely felt like a true home.

It felt weird, being in Sam's house without Sam there with him, especially since it was his first visit to the house, and having Rodney with him, subtly poking around, made the whole experience even weirder. Still, John had promised Sam that he would check on her house for her, and that he would water her plants while he was there. John didn't know if it was because Sam actually wanted him to check on her house and water her plants of if she just wanted to make sure that he left the Mountain for more than sleep in the hotel room he had moved into as soon as he had been allowed to leave the base. Either way, though, John did as he had been asked, checking her house—nothing seemed out of place, though it was hard to tell since every room was in various stages of being packed up—and making sure her newspapers and her mail were brought inside so that people wouldn't know that the house had been empty for several days, and he watered her plants—there were explicit instructions beside the watering can on her kitchen counter, including several topics of conversation she had determined her plants enjoyed (how she came to those conclusions John didn't want to know) and he followed the instructions as far as plant food and water levels were concerned, but he decided to skip the talking thing, if only because he had always thought that people who talked to their plants were a little bit crazy.

John was just making sure that he had managed to get to all of the plants that Sam had—she had a lot, and none of them were in places that John would have thought to look for plants in—when Rodney's voice broke through the silence of the house. "What's with all the soft science texts?"

Following the sound of his friend's voice, John found the astrophysicist in Sam's bedroom. With a disapproving look on his face John manoeuvred Rodney out into the neutral terrain of the living room.

Rodney let out an unintelligible complaint before flopping down on the couch. "I could be making headway on any number of projects right now," he groused.

Rolling his eyes, John left to do one last sweep around the house. After making sure that the house was locked up tight John dragged Rodney out to the car.

"Where are we going, anyway?" Rodney asked.

John pulled a few package receipts form his jacket pocket and handed them to Rodney. "Things we couldn't get shipped," he said by way of explanation.

"There's a lot of George Clooney on here," Rodney said, frowning at one of the receipts.

"Teyla," John said, and Rodney nodded, immediately understanding. He might not act like it, but John knew that Rodney knew more about his team mates than he would ever admit, from things like Ford's high school soccer career to John's distanced relationship with his sisters to how Teyla would often talk to her mother and father as if they were still alive when she didn't think that anyone was around to hear her. "You hungry?" John asked, his stomach reminding him that he hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast, which had been a long eight hours earlier.

"Starving," Rodney replied.

"Dinner?" John inquired.

"No citrus," Rodney warned.

"I promise," John said with a smile as he pulled made a turn off the road he was on and started heading toward one of his old haunts that, he had been pleased to notice on the way to Sam's, was still open for business.

* * *

Though the music wasn't terrible and the food was almost half-way decent, Elizabeth had managed to reach a state of total overload much faster than usual, she assumed because she had nearly a year where she hadn't had to attend anything that required more than a clean uniform and, once, a very itchy headdress that she had only worn because it was the only way they would get the people of a planet they had stumbled upon to trade for their local resource.

Jack had been swept away by a group of military types not long after the two of them had arrived at the party, leaving Elizabeth alone, not really knowing anyone in the room—her political crowd had been slightly different than the one that had gathered for the current shindig—and after making small talk with the one person she had recognized (vaguely, from a diplomatic mission she had been on nearly six years earlier) for a few minutes Elizabeth found herself, once again, alone in a sea of people.

Parties and galas and the like were not Elizabeth's favourite part of the job, and she was finding it even less appealing after a year of being in the Pegasus Galaxy—to say that she was out of the loop was the understatement of the century. Though she had tried to catch up on world events that she had missed, but, while she was fairly comfortable talking about the big, and relatively unchanging, omnipresent issues, she hadn't had the time, nor the inclination, to delve into the gossip and the little things about life on Earth, which was what most of the conversations she was hearing bits and pieces of were consisting of. She had never liked the gossip and whatnot that seemed inevitable in gatherings of a group nature, had always tried to avoid those kinds of situations, though, unfortunately, she had never had much success in doing so.

With a flute of champagne in hand and a congenial smile on her face Elizabeth worked her way through the room, stopping only once to exchange pleasantries with Colonel Checkov and his aide before escaping to the silence and isolation of the balcony.

The balcony overlooked the Potomac, which, while not as soothing as the ocean under Atlantis, was still quite picturesque.

"Feel like home?" Jack asked, causing Elizabeth to jump. "Sorry," he said with a smile.

Elizabeth shook her head. "The doors back home… they make a 'whoosh' sound," Elizabeth said.

"A 'whoosh' sound?" Jack asked, eyebrow arched.

"Just another way that Earth is different from Atlantis," Elizabeth said with a half-hearted shrug.

Jack leaned against the railing beside Elizabeth. "You really miss it, huh?"

"Oh yeah," Elizabeth agreed. "And with the **Daedalus **having trouble with its engines its going to be even longer before I get back there."

"You know… a lot diplomats of your stature—hell, of any stature—would kill for the chance to be in this room with these people all at once without the threat of war hanging over our heads," Jack said.

"Yeah, but they don't know that the concerns of Earth's international politics are, quite frankly, lame compared to those of this galaxy, not to mention of the whole universe. The Goa'uld and the Wraith and god knows what else is out there that we haven't even run into yet… when you compare that to disputes over oil or whatever the world wants to fight about this week our disputes are pretty petty."

Jack cringed. "Don't tempt the fates of the whatever by sayin' there's evil out there we haven't pissed off yet," he chastised.

"Sorry," Elizabeth said as she rolled her eyes. She'd never believed in fates or jinxes or anything of the sort, though she did have to concede that, despite their innate ability to get out of whatever they found themselves in, since SG-1 started going through the 'Gate—hell, even a year before there even was a SG-1 to go through the 'Gate—the luck that the Tau'ri had had was less than good. In fact, it sucked in a big way. "You're wrong about one thing, though," Elizabeth said as she turned to go back inside, knowing that she couldn't hide out until the party was over, despite how badly she wanted to, her newly developed, though thankfully rather minor, case of Demophobia making the solitude of the balcony very appealing.

"What's that?" Jack asked.

"We _are _at war," Elizabeth said before pulling open the door and slipping back into the ballroom.

* * *

Though his belongings were still in various boxes and he was beginning to think that maybe he should leave them where they were so it would be easier to escape, General Hank Landry made a conscious decision, as he had every morning since taking over command of the SGC—little Sergeant with annoying psychic powers and all—to stick it out, at least for one more day. There was always tomorrow to turn tail and run, though he had never done that in his life and he was almost entirely certain that he didn't want to start.

So, coffee, care of the psychic Sergeant, in hand, Landry sat down at the heavy wooden desk and mentally reviewed the litany of direly important tasks he had to complete in the next hour if he wanted to finish the things that were supposed to be finished the day before in time to start the current day on time. Not running on schedule was one of the big things about the SGC that bugged Landry, though, considering how good everyone was at their jobs—he hardly got to yell at all anymore, which he was sure was the reason his blood pressure was spiking as of late—the fact that things ran as closely to schedule as they did was saying a lot. He shuddered to think what life would be like if they didn't have the best and the brightest doing what they did best.

He was up to date nearly on schedule; the day before hadn't been too busy so he hadn't had too much spill over left to take care of. All he had to do was make two phone calls—both ending with him leaving a message with a voicemail, which required him to stick to cryptic and practised lines that would mean nothing to anyone who didn't know what they mean—and scan a stack of requisition forms—he decided that he didn't want to know why off-world teams needed copper wire, aerosol extra-hold unscented hair spray, and metal nail files added to their standard equipment; there were some things he just didn't need to know, he'd just signed the forms, remembering the words of advice Jack had offered when he had given the command over to him: _"No matter how weird is seems, these people don't screw around with their gear; just sign the damn forms 'cause most of these kids make MacGyver lack imagination."_

Finally freed of the previous day's agenda, Landry turned to his morning schedule, frowning when he read the first thing he would be doing.

_MEET WITH SHEPPARD re: X-302_

To be honest he didn't know Sheppard, had only been able to tell who he was when the four Lantians stepped through the wormhole because Sheppard was the only American, other than Doctor Weir, to return to the SGC that day. The little flags on their jackets were probably incredibly helpful on Atlantis; back at the SGC it just made the four Lantians stand out even more than they strictly needed to as outsiders in the little SGC world most people inside Cheyenne Mountain lived in.

Landry had read Sheppard's file from before he left for Atlantis and, though he questioned the decision to let him go with all that was outlined in his record, Landry had to admit that, given his natural ability with the Ancient Technology Activation gene, he was definitely an asset. Giving him a command, however, was not something Landry thought was wise, and he planned to rectify that as soon as he could.

However that wasn't what the meeting that morning was about. The meeting that was due to start as soon as Sheppard arrived was about the X-302 fighter planes, bastardized fighters of both Goa'uld and Tau'ri technology.

Despite Sheppard's record, Landry had to admit, the Major could fly.

Anything.

The list of aircrafts he was checked out on—both planes and helicopters—was over two pages long, and the skill with which he flew any given craft was, from what Landry could tell, legendary. It was undeniable: the man was born to fly.

Even the SGC's golden child, Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter, had nothing but praise for the Major, though Landry had noticed that the two of them were spending a lot of time together so he had to consider that Sam's opinions were tainted by something other than professional respect. The SGC grapevine—which was notorious for both speed and dirt-tracking ability—had informed Landry, though indirectly, that Carter and Sheppard had known each other for years, and a quick glance at their respective files had confirmed that they were in the same class at the Air Force Academy.

Landry was just about to try to find Sheppard's file in the heavily secured hidden cabinet that held the information on Atlantis—very little was left on computers lest the security protocols they had in place weren't good enough, and paper files were easily disposed of if needed, the Trust having reached so many levels of various world governments that the thought that they might be in the SGC was not a far stretch—when Walter Harriman appeared in the doorway.

"Ahh, Radar, what is it now?" Landry asked the recently promoted Chief Master Sergeant.

"Major Sheppard is here," Harriman said, ignoring the MASH reference—he'd heard it before, both because of his short stature and because of his ability to anticipate the needs of his superiors; the former he blamed on his parents, neither one being over five foot three, and the latter he simply chalked up to being damned good at his job.

Nodding, Landry motioned for Harriman to let the Major in. Harriman nodded and disappeared from sight and a moment later Sheppard appeared, his posture straightening, though not coming to attention, just inside the doorway. He was wearing his uniform (dark BDU pants, a black tee shirt, and his black-and-grey jacket with Atlantis patch on the right shoulder and an American flag patch on the left, his combat boots clean but clearly well-worn) with his hair doing the same bed-head thing that it had every time that Landry had seen him, and his face was freshly shaven. His eyes were subtly but quickly taking in everything in sight—the exits, potential weapons both defensive and offensive, the boxes, the files, and, finally, the General himself—and, though he seemed quite relaxed, which seemed to be a perpetual state for John Sheppard, Landry could tell that the Major was anything but relaxed. He was, if anything, on guard, as if expecting an attack of some kind at any second. Landry recognized the look—most true warriors had that look, even when in what was supposed to be friendly territory.

Landry's respect for Sheppard immediately increased.

"I need you to be at Peterson at 1100 hours. There'll be a C-17 waiting to take you to Nevada," Landry said without preamble.

"Sir?" Sheppard said, slightly confused.

"General O'Neill and Doctor Weir convinced the Pentagon that Atlantis should have a few X-302's to back up your… Puddle Jumpers," Landry said, frowning at the name of the Winnebago-like ships that he had been briefed on, both by the files of Doctor Radek Zelenka and by Sheppard himself. "They've got a bit more firepower," he said.

"The Jumpers are equipped with drones," Sheppard pointed out, immediately jumping to the defence of his beloved Puddle Jumpers.

Landry nodded. "They are. But you are limited in speed, manoeuvrability, and defensive measures. The 302's, though not as intuitive as what you're undoubtedly used to by now, are a more viable weapon in battle." He located the file with the information Sheppard would need and handed it to the Major. "The **Daedalus **will be leaving a compliment of X-302's in the care of Atlantis when it takes you all back," Landry continued, "and, seeing as you seem to be checked out on any bird out there, Doctor Weir and I figured you'd like to get inside the cockpit of your newest ride before you get back to your war zone."

Sheppard nodded, though he wasn't sure how much training he would really require—flying had always been mostly intuitive for him, even before encountering the Puddle Jumpers on Atlantis that, quite literally, read his mind, and he had never been the type to learn from listening to an instructor, he was a kinetic learner; he learned by actually doing things rather than listening and reading and memorizing, though he was skilled at learning those ways, too.

"If you get a chance, talk to Colonel Carter about her experiences with the 302's. You two seem to get on well with each other," Landry said.

"Colonel Carter and I have known each other for a long time, sir," John said, jumping to the defensive, mostly out of habit. Past CO's had thought that there was something going on with him and Sam, and, while it wouldn't be great for his career, it would be a harpoon to Sam's career, one that she would, likely, not survive. John had had to face the thought of leaving the Air Force so many times that he knew he had options out there. And, while John knew that Sam had just as many, if not more, options open to her, the Air Force was her life, it was what she loved most, and John would do anything to keep Sam from losing that.

Landry nodded. "So your files say." He took a beat and then said, "You'll be at Peterson on time?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Colonel Carter is due back in two hours. Talk to her, then head out," Landry said. John nodded. "Dismissed."

With one more nod, John executed a quick about face and left the office.

* * *

_I haven't really been doing the A/N thing for this story on this site, but this chapter warranted it._

_Demophobia, also known as Enochiophobia, is the fear of crowds, not to be confused with Agoraphobia, which is the fear of being caught out in open spaces._

Now, I know that a lot of people wanted John to show up at the party, and, honestly, I wrote a version where he did, but I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted it to. So that version was cut, but, don't worry, in the next chapter or two Elizabeth will be back at the SGC. Promise.

The bit about Sam talking to her plants is from an episode in, I think, season 3 where she admits that she figured out how to save an alien race because she talks to her plants.

And, of course, I had to include a MacGuyver reference, especially since I was making yet another Radar O'Reilly (with regards to Walter Harriman) reference in the same section.

Thank you for your birthday wishes.

Manic Penguin


	11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

* * *

The gym was poorly lit, something that John had noticed was true of most of the buildings he had been in while back on Earth—though, admittedly, he knew that he had been spoiled by the lights on Atlantis that were, for the most part, controlled by his thoughts, adjusting to how bright he wanted the light to be with nothing more than a fleeting consideration. The room itself was fairly basic, some weight machines, some free weights, a boxing ring, two treadmills, a rowing machine, a row of punching bags, and a few other machines that John remembered once relying upon for his exercise—going to the gym was basically the only way to stay fit in Antarctica, going for a run outside not really being an option—but, again, John wasn't used to having equipment beyond fighting sticks, floor-space, and some great running routes. 

"When you said you wanted to hit the gym this isn't exactly what I had in mind," Sam said as she spun away from a high kick aimed at her shoulder.

"You said you've been keeping up on your hand-to-hand," John reminded her, ducking under Sam's responding punch. He swept his leg out to knock Sam's legs out from under her but she jumped high enough to avoid his tactic.

Sam chuckled. "You've been training with an alien fighting warrior princess, John."

"Oh, like Teal'c never taught you any moves," John replied, rolling his eyes.

"Took him a few years to realize he wasn't going to break the tiny blonde on the team by fighting me, but, yeah, sure, he and I've sparred a little," Sam admitted. She arched an eyebrow at John. "Were you calling Teal'c a warrior princess?" John rolled his eyes in response. "So, really, this is how you relax now? You never used to be all that into hand-to-hand."

John shrugged. "Things changed."

"That… is true," Sam agreed. "Still, you didn't just get back from a five mile hike off-world," she pointed out.

"Why do you think I'm goin' easy on ya?" John smirked, knowing that the comment would incite a reaction in Sam.

Which it did.

They fought hard for several minutes before mutually pulling back from the intensity of the fight and circling each other, sizing each other up before the next round of attack.

"So rumour has it that there's a guy," John said conversationally as he and Sam circled each other. "How's he feel about you moving to Nevada?"

"Huh. Apparently the gossip mongers around here are a few steps behind," Sam commented. The rumour mill never would have moved so slow before Doctor Janet Frasier was killed, Sam realized sadly. "The guy is gone," she said as she executed a series of attacks that pushed John back toward the wall.

John ducked away, moving around behind Sam and moved back to the centre of the room. "Was it serious?" he asked.

Sam rolled her shoulders. "We were planning the wedding," she said casually.

Arching an eyebrow at that, John's eyes met Sam's. "You were engaged?"

"Kinda," Sam said. John stared at her and Sam threw her hands up in the air in defeat. "Okay, yes, we were. But I broke it off. His picture of me and our future didn't meet up with reality… and when dad died… I started really thinking about the reasons that I got into the relationship and… well... they were bad reasons, really. I was coming off a pretty intense thing… went back for years… though mostly it was a safety net for me, when it was gone… then Mark introduced me to Pete and… it kept growing."

"He wasn't like Hanson, was he?" John asked protectively. He had been there for Sam all through the Jonas Hanson years—had actually been a pretty strong point of contention between Sam and Jonas Hanson because of their close friendship—and John hated Hanson for what he had made Sam think and feel about herself.

"No," Sam said quickly. "He was just… he didn't really get that I love my job and I love my life despite the weirdness and the aliens and the evil and the cheesy villains." She brought her fists up defensively. "We gonna spar, or what?" she asked, effectively closing the subject.

John nodded and assumed a fighting stance. "I just want you to be happy, Samantha."

Sam attacked John, knocking him down and pressing her knee into his back as his face hit the mat. "I am happy," she said, applying a little more pressure before getting up and holding out a hand to help John to his feet.

"Good," John said, because, really, that was all he wanted. "So, I'm supposed to pick your brain about the X-302's," he said as he and Sam grabbed their water bottles, taking a mutually agreed upon break from their sparring.

"What about it?" Sam asked as she stretched her arms above her head, unused to the workout her body had just been through.

"General Landry is sending me to learn to fly 'em," John shrugged.

"I doubt you'll have trouble," Sam said, "you've always been able to fly whatever's put in front of you."

John shrugged. "Not worried about learning to fly the things. Landry just suggested that I talk to you about your… experiences, I guess."

"Okay. Well, I'm sure you'll get a full briefing when you get to Nellis, but the first thing you need to remember is that the X-302 is hybrid technology. It is, in essence, a fighter jet like any other, expect that it has alien technology including the ability to open stable hyperspace windows," Sam said.

"Hyperspace windows. Got it," John nodded.

"Now, I assume that you've got a basic understanding of inertial dampeners," Sam said.

"Yeah, I've got a good handle on that concept," John said.

"Good," Sam said before she went on to explain more about the fighter jets that John would soon be training on.

* * *

As he watched the highway speed by John thought about the events of the days since arriving on Earth. The first few days were just what he had predicted—invasive and intense physical by the SGC doctor, several painstaking eighteen hour days of steady debriefings, and then Elizabeth left for DC to do the politicking thing, Carson left for Scotland to visit with his mother, and Rodney holing himself up in the lab that had been made available for his use. The only thing that was any different from what he had anticipated was that he had found one of his oldest friends at the SGC and had spent most of his time with her and her team rather than bored and alone.

"If you don't mind my asking, sir, what is Atlantis like?" asked the young Sergeant who had been tasked with driving John to Peterson Air Force Base then bringing the SGC car back to the mountain.

On Atlantis, unless dealing with official situations, rank tended to more or less simply fall away, an environment that John and Elizabeth had fostered and, to differing degrees, revelled in. Sure, neither one of them was hesitant to pull rank when necessary, but, for the most part, the only designations that seemed to matter were military or scientist, and even those classifications tended to fall by the wayside under certain circumstances. Since returning to Earth, however, John had been thrust back into an existence of ranks and protocols that had been drilled into him and every other military type from day one. The problem with rank, at least in John's opinion, was that it tended to make situations that should be relatively casual and painless—for example, a car ride that is approximately fourteen and a half kilometres long through some very picturesque terrain—into an awkward and tense reality.

"Atlantis is… crazy," John said, chuckling. "On one hand there are the Wraith and the Genii and various sympathizers. But on the other hand… it's Atlantis. The Lost City of the Ancients." He shrugged. "It is home," he said, unable to accurately describe what Atlantis was like.

John and the Sergeant chatted through the ride to Patterson. The Sergeant, it turned out, was an avid football fan, especially at the college level, so John soon found himself more or less up to date on his favourite game. It hadn't been a very good year for her favourite teams, but he'd already known that from the few moments he'd cut away from life at the SGC to check the internet for the general overview of the season he'd missed.

The Sergeant had a bit of a lead foot, John noted, because the trip between Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson, which took about an hour when taking all the variables—traffic, construction, other man-made and natural obstacles—was over in less than forty minutes, and not because traffic was light. The good thing was that John was certainly not going to miss his hop—he shuddered to think what Landry would do to him if he missed the transport—but the bad thing was that he had over forty minutes to waste before he had to even think about starting to head for a seat on the hulking C-17 that was being checked over on by a crew when he arrived.

So, as he often did when he was bored, John turned to Elizabeth for help in keeping his mind occupied.

Of course, on Atlantis, all he really had to do was go to her office, or maybe the Mess, perch himself on the edge of her desk or sit across the table from her, and strike up a conversation. A continent apart—not to mention a galaxy away from the familiar metal-and-glass city that they called home—turning to Elizabeth was a little more difficult, and generally required a phone line.

Fortunately John had a phone and the knowledge that Elizabeth didn't have any meetings that day, a vote in the House taking the attention of most of the people she needed to meet with.

It didn't escape John's notice that Elizabeth's cell phone was the first number in his speed-dial—a concept he had had to adjust to after a year on Atlantis, eighteen months in Antarctica, and two years being stationed anywhere except the United States. Of course, he rationalized, he had a limited number of people that he talked to, and even fewer that he wanted to talk to, at least on Earth, and Elizabeth was the only person who wasn't easily accessible by simply wandering the halls of the SGC or dialling the proper extension and leaving a message. Before he'd left the SGC he had had Sam program in any other numbers he would need while in Nevada—her numbers, Daniel's numbers, any number that Teal'c could be reached at, Rodney's extension, Carson's numbers in Scotland, all the numbers he would need for the SGC, and, he was surprised to note, the numbers of a few of their old Academy buddies that Sam, apparently, had handy while she had been messing with his phone. Sam had put herself in as the second speed-dial designation, then the main SGC switchboard (which was answered by someone who didn't have the clearance to know who she was connecting calls to) was put in as the third. The rest were left empty, which was fine with John. It was just as easy to scroll through the phone book—it wasn't like it was full of names and numbers—to find the number he needed.

After keying in the speed-dial designation—2, on his phone, 1 connecting him to his voicemail, not that he had any, anyone who called him immediately getting a response because his phone was always with him, just like his radio back on Atlantis—John's thumb lingered over the SEND key, unsure of whether his call would be well-received or not. It was, after all, Elizabeth's day off, and she had said something about relaxing and washing away the mental grime she had found herself accumulating during her meetings. John knew mental grime well, in all its unsavoury forms.

He was still trying to decide whether or not to call when his phone sprung to life in his hands, first vibrating and then letting out a rather annoying pop-rock polyphonic ring tone—obviously, he decided with a frown, when Sam had been entering phone numbers she had also decided to futz with other things, as he knew for a fact that his ring tone had been a simple ring-ring, default-4 or something like that, the ringing unique enough that he knew it was his but bland enough that no one in the SGC thought twice when they heard it.

With the feeling of at least forty sets of eyes on him, John quickly answered the phone, eager to stop the looping song that he didn't recognize and would get back at Sam for at a later date.

* * *

_Love? Hate? Completely indifferent? Review, no matter which category you fit into!_

_Manic Penguin_


	12. Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

* * *

"Sheppard," John growled into the phone, his head bowed as he tried to avoid the slightly mocking stares of those around him. He decided then and there that the payback he owed Sam would be intense and unexpected, because he could swear that a couple of the airmen around him, whose eyes were still on him, were mockingly humming their own rendition of the ring tone that Sam had set his phone to.

_"Grumpy,"_ Elizabeth said, her surprise and disapproval with his tone evident in her voice.

Cringing, John closed his eyes tight. "Crap. Sorry, Elizabeth. It's… been a weird day," he said earnestly. "What's up?"

_"Well, I was just informed that I'm finished here, so I'll be back in __Colorado Springs__ around nine tonight. You think you'll be up for a late dinner in town?"_ Elizabeth asked hopefully. _"You said you'd show me some of your old haunts, and it's starting to look like we don't have much time left before we leave again,"_ she added, a note of joy in her voice bringing a smile to John's face, however briefly. The **Daedalus** was back in the Milky Way, would be back in Earth's orbit for whatever repairs remained to be done in less than a week—apparently Hermiod wanted to give the hyperdrive a rest so they were going to have to make due with sublight engines for the rest of the trip. Once the **Daedalus** was repaired—which John had been told would take two days, three tops—the crew was to have two days of on-Earth leave time, which, while not enough to actually go anywhere, was enough to breathe non-recycled oxygen and experience actual daylight for forty-eight hours, not to mention enjoy the fact that they had soil under their feet. After that they were heading back to the Pegasus Galaxy.

The flash of happiness John felt when Elizabeth asked him to take her out to dinner disappeared as his surroundings came back to him in a rush. Peterson. C-17 on the tarmac. T-minus-36-minutes to departure. By the time Elizabeth arrived in Colorado Springs at nine he would be either at Nellis itself, in the BOQ (bachelor officer's quarters) or he would be somewhere within the Groom Lake facility (more commonly called Area 51) where the X-302's were stored and his training would take place. "You have no idea how good that sounds right now, Elizabeth, but I'm waiting for a hop to Nellis," John said.

_"Nellis? Why are you going to __Nevada__?"_ Elizabeth asked. John could hear the frown in her voice, and knew that her forehead would do the adorable little crinkling thing that happened when she was confused; something that happened so rarely that it was usually an event in and of itself.

John smiled at the mental image he had of Elizabeth. He had an excellent imagination, especially when it came to Elizabeth, and he could see her, clear as day, in her hotel room, half packed suitcase on the bed, a cup of room service coffee on the nightstand, probably empty or near empty, most likely her seventh or eighth cup of the day. Dressed in casual clothes, since she didn't have any meetings and didn't need to impress anyone. Bare feet—that John knew for a fact, Elizabeth having confided in him several months earlier, that she rarely wore shoes or socks while home, preferring the feeling of her bare feet on the cool floor, which, she had said, was one of the drawbacks to being in Atlantis; the floors were not exactly bare-foot friendly.

"Because my forward thinking CO decided that the Jumpers aren't enough," John said. "Which, of course, we're going to have to talk about, because that is a betrayal of a very intense kind, Elizabeth."

_"Yeah, okay, we'll talk about the intensity of my betrayal,"_ Elizabeth said indulgently. John could practically hear her rolling her eyes. _"You seriously have to leave today? I'm feeling very out of touch right now and I don't know how much help Rodney will be with that."_

"If General Landry hadn't said 'don't miss that flight' like, a dozen times, sure, I'd hold off a day, but as it is I think the General would rather have Rodney marry his daughter than give me a reprieve here," John said with a slight smile, remembering how Landry had reacted when he caught Rodney flirting—in the way that Rodney flirts—with Doctor Carolyn Lam when he met her in the elevator a few days earlier. John was sure that Landry wanted to throw Rodney into the kawoosh of the Stargate. Carolyn had just found it amusing.

Elizabeth sighed. "_How long are you going to be training?"_ she asked.

"No one's actually said," John admitted. "But I usually pick these things up pretty quick," he added. He wasn't bragging. He was simply stating a fact. In the time between Rodney showing him the Puddle Jumpers and Rodney and Elizabeth arriving, less than five minutes later, John had managed to figure our how to start a Jumper, cloak it, get it to hover in place, and, after a particularly random thought, how to do a barrel roll in place, though he couldn't think of any tactical advantage a stationary barrel roll would have.

_"I know,"_ Elizabeth said. _"So, when you get back…"_

"It's a date," John promised. Immediately he cringed, regretting the term he'd used to define their plans. 'Date' had too many connotations, most of them far more intimate than could be applied to their relationship that was, at most, a close friendship.

_"Good,"_ Elizabeth said with a smile that was clearly evident in her voice.

* * *

One military transport, an extended meeting with General Landry at the SGC, and a rushed meal in the Commissary with SG-1 (which, strangely, was pleasant, much like the few meals that she and Sam and Daniel and Teal'c had had during the few months Elizabeth had been in charge of the SGC, with none of the tension that existed when John was around) later Elizabeth officially had twenty-four hours with nothing to do before she had to get back to the SGC to deal with the million and one things that needed to be taken care of before they could go back to Atlantis.

Her professional life was, for the most part, under control.

It was her personal life that was in turmoil.

Flirty conversations with John she could deal with. They'd happened pretty much since day one. He was a natural-born flirt, seemed to do it instinctively whenever he came across anyone with double-X chromosomes, and when she was around him something seemed to happen to her, like a switched was flipped in her brain, and she could do nothing more than give as give as good as she got. They always flirted, it came as naturally as breathing to the both of them when they were in the same room, or, as of late, talking to each other over the phone.

Flirty conversations she could deal with. Hell, even the sex dreams—which often left her shaking and unable to look John in the eye for at least a day afterwards—were something she could deal with. John Sheppard was a sexy man, she was a red-blooded female, and, until shortly before she went to Antarctica and met John, she'd been having more than half-decent sex on a fairly regular basis.

But the dream she had had that morning after their conversation was no simple lust-fuelled fantasy sequence.

It was freaking domestic.

_The city was quiet—the ZPM didn't give off the same soft hum that the Naqueda generators did—and Elizabeth had retired to her quarters early, not even taking any work with her when she left her office at the previously unheard of hour of 1700 hours. Even as she walked the familiar route to her quarters Elizabeth couldn't understand why she was leaving her office at what was, to her, a sickeningly early hour without Carson and Kate Heightmeyer dragging her away kicking and screaming with conversations of therapy and high doses of tranquilizers passing between the medical doctor and the psychologist. _

_Passing her hand over the control crystals outside her door __Elizabeth__ waited a second for the doors to open before moving forward again. She'd walked before waiting too many times, usually while doing work on the run, to not pause when a door was controlled by the three crystals and the city's mental connection to it's in habitants that Elizabeth didn't even pretend to understand rather than the automatic doors that simply opened when they sensed a presence heading toward them. _

_When __Elizabeth__ entered her quarters the lights didn't automatically come on like the usually did, which could only mean one thing. _

_"John?" __Elizabeth__ called softly as the doors closed again. He didn't respond, so she said his name again, a little louder. That got his attention and he turned to face her, offering an affectionate smile in response to her welcome. "I thought we were meeting in the Mess," she said when she saw John relaxing in the big overstuffed chair that he had taken over as his own whenever he was in her quarters. Which they usually were since it was bigger than his and, to be perfectly honest, the Johnny Cash poster that John had hanging over his bed creeped __Elizabeth__ out a bit. _

_"We were. At eight," John said, marking his page in War and Peace and putting the book down. _

_Elizabeth__ cringed. Over an hour later. Not a record by any means, but definitely not good girlfriend behaviour. "Oh, god, I'm sorry, John. I thought we were meeting at nine," she said earnestly. She dropped her jacket on the end of her bed. "Great. I thought I was going to be the bad girlfriend for being a few minutes late," she muttered. "Why didn't you radio me?" she asked as she crossed the room and crawled into John's lap, snuggling into his embrace. _

_"Because then I'd be the nagging boyfriend," John said, smiling against her neck. _

_"Did you eat?" __Elizabeth__ asked as John began dropping kisses up and down her neck. _

_"Don't want food," John whispered against her skin. _

_Elizabeth__ laughed. "That wasn't my question," she said even as she angled her head so that John had easier access to the spot behind her ear. Whenever he touched her there, even if it was just when he tucked her hair behind her ear and his fingers accidentally—or maybe not so accidentally, considering that John knew how that spot affected her—brushed against it, her toes curled and any resistance she may have had melted away like an ice cube on hot pavement. John chuckled softly at how her words and her actions contradicted each other. _

_Just when Elizabeth was rapidly approaching the point where she was all for skipping dinner in favour of continuing what John had started to it's conclusion, suddenly and against her wishes, Carson's voice began echoing in her head, chastising her about her plummeting iron levels, about days on end that she would live on coffee alone, about how her body could only take so much neglect before it rebelled against her. And how John wasn't much better sometimes. _

_"John, I'm hungry," Elizabeth said, reluctantly pulling back from his ministrations. She affected a slight pout and made her eyes wide and guileless, knowing, with some satisfaction, that he would do anything she asked of him when she gave him that look. _

_Letting his forehead drop to __Elizabeth__'s shoulder John sighed. "To the mess?" he questioned. Elizabeth nodded and got up, twining their fingers together and pulling John with her. _

_John stumbled twice on the way to the door and __Elizabeth__ stopped and looked at him carefully. There were dark circles under his eyes, his shoulders were slumped slightly, his eyes were slightly glassy and unfocused, and he was wavering slightly on his feet. Raising her free hand to cup his cheek she tilted his head so that his eyes met hers. "You were asleep when I came in, weren't you?" she asked gently. _

_"Not intentionally. I just sat down to wait for you. Next thing I know you're here waking me up," John said apologetically. _

_Softening, __Elizabeth__ mentally went over what she knew John had done that day. A four-hour long mission stemming from a supposed lead on Ford that came up empty, followed by several hours training new members of the expedition, a trip to the Mainland with Teyla to help find a lost Athosian boy that took another four hours of hiking through the dense forest of the Mainland, and, on top of all that, his regular duties around the City. Add to that the fact that she knew he hadn't been sleeping well lately, nightmares of alternate outcomes of the siege on Atlantis having been haunting him ever since they returned from Earth, and Elizabeth could understand why he looked like he was about to fall asleep standing up. _

_Changing directions, __Elizabeth__ pulled John over towards the bed. She gently helped undress him and urged him to get under the covers without a word. Once he was tucked in she pressed a kiss to his forehead. "I'm just going to grab a quick bite. You want me to bring you anything back?" she asked as she ran her fingers through his thick hair. John shook his head and mumbled something about not feeling all that hungry in a sleep-thickened voice. _

_She continued running her fingers through his hair, whispering tender words of love every so often, until his breathing evened out and his body relaxed into sleep. Careful so as not to wake him she got up and… _

… and woke up.

She hadn't meant to fall asleep after talking to John. It was, after all, mid-morning, nearing late morning, even, and she rarely slept past five thirty even after her latest of late nights. But she had packed everything she brought to DC with her, as well as everything she had purchased since arriving in DC—she had no idea what she would do with her new gown, or the four new suits she had indulged in when she realized that rotating through the same meagre selection for god-knows-how-long in strings of meetings that wouldn't end was not the best way to make a good impression on people who spent more on a single outfit than most people did on car payments—and she had finished her book two nights before and she'd already read two different papers, both reporting variations on the same stories that, really, had little to no effect on her life that she would be getting back to shortly, so she had lay down on the bed and closed her eyes against the beam of sunlight that hit her face and, without her consent, she had fallen into a deep slumber.

And she had dreamed.

Dreaming wasn't something that Elizabeth did often, and if she did she didn't remember any mental plays that went on while she slept. Sure, she had had more erotic mental wake-ups in the past year than she had during the first thirty years of her life, but, Elizabeth rationalized, it was inevitable when working so closely with a man like John Sheppard, the star of her fantasies and the man who had worked his way so far under her skin that he was officially a part of her. Working closely with John didn't help her keep her dreams, if she were ever to dream, in the realm of PG. And it certainly didn't help that, as late as she usually worked, he was always on duty a little later than she was (which, to be honest, Elizabeth was suspicious of, since the rest of his team, with the exception of Rodney, was known to retire fairly early, compared to other teams) and he always, without fail, radioed her to report what had happened in the control room since she had left, or to share some minor discovery that she would be hearing about in the morning senior staff meeting, or simply just to check in and say goodnight and maybe double check what time their senior staff meeting would be the next day since it tended to be the meeting that floated throughout the day to accommodate other meetings that had more of a clock on them, and so John's voice was almost always the last she heard before she went to sleep.

She realized she could rationalize most of the dream that way. She had been talking to John just before she fell asleep, and they had been talking about getting dinner together, away from everyone at work. The original plans had been put off by John, just like in the dream. The word 'date' had been mentioned during their conversation, but Elizabeth decided that John meant it in the same way you make a lunch date with your mother or your best friend—which, really, was what Elizabeth was doing. Making a lunch date with her best friend. So what if he was an incredibly attractive man who she had sex dreams about. He was still her best friend.

There was nothing more to it, Elizabeth decided.

Except for the pulsating rock in the pit of her stomach that reminded Elizabeth that she wanted what she had seen in her dream, in all of her dreams. The sex, the heat, the love, the tenderness, and, yes, even the domesticity.

Which was why, because she was with Simon and she didn't want to throw away the nearly five years they had been together before she left for Atlantis, Elizabeth decided that instead of staying at the SGC in the quarters she had been assigned like she had planned she would go back and live in her house, with Simon, assuming that he hadn't moved on. Because if she could convince him to join her in Atlantis the craziness in her head about John would stop and her life could go back to normal. Or whatever the Pegasus Galaxy equivalent of normal was.

So, it was with a deep breath that Elizabeth found herself taking the final few steps up to the door.

"Goa'uld System Lords, Wraith invasions, psychotic Genii rogue faction leaders holding a screwy gun to my head… and _this _freaks me out," she muttered, chastising herself for her cowardice. "Suck it up, Weir. It's just Simon. The worst thing that can happen here is he's moved on," Elizabeth said firmly before raising her fist and resolutely knocking on the heavy wooden door.

Taking half a step back Elizabeth waiting for the door to open. Simon's car was in the driveway and she could hear movement inside the house, so she knew that someone was home. The only question was who.

Nearly a full minute after she knocked on the door someone finally came to answer it. The door opened and Simon was standing there, completely shocked, Sedge standing a few feet behind him. Upon seeing her owner Sedge leapt forward, jumping up and putting her front paws on Elizabeth's shoulders, licking her face and generally expressing how happy she was to see Elizabeth again.

"I've missed you, too, girl," Elizabeth said, smiling at the warm welcome she was getting from her pooch. The welcome she was getting from Simon was nonexistent, after all. He was still just staring at her with a rather dopey look of confusion on his face.

Once Sedge had satisfied herself that Elizabeth smelled and tasted the same as she had the last time they had seen each other she let her paws fall from Elizabeth's shoulders and lay down with her head resting on Elizabeth's left shoe, not caring that she was half inside and half outside of the house, just basking in the joy of having her owner home after so very long.

"Hello, Simon," Elizabeth said softly, internally cringing at the memory of greeting the mist-Simon the same generic way when they had thought they had found a way home several months earlier.

" Elizabeth," Simon said at last, his shocked tone exactly the same as the tone that mist-Simon had used in response to her generic greeting.

The whole sense of déjà vu was getting to be a little much for Elizabeth, but she didn't know what to do to make it go away, what to do to change the bizarro holding pattern they seemed to be stuck in.

Simon blinked several times in quick succession, as if he wasn't quite sure that Elizabeth wasn't just a trick of light or something. Then he stepped forward, careful not to tread on Sedge who was content to stay exactly where she was for the time being, and pulled Elizabeth into a rather stiff embrace that she returned weakly.

Thoughts, unbidden and unwanted, floated through Elizabeth's mind as she and Simon shared a thoroughly awkward hug. Thoughts of another hug she had experienced recently. Thoughts of John. Thoughts of the gentle scent of the fabric softener used on Atlantis. Thoughts of the manly musk of sweat, hard earned both by terror and exertion, tickling her nose as she fought the urge to bury her face in the curve of John's neck. Thoughts of how, in that moment, despite the fact that they were in the middle of what looked to be their last battle, knowing that he was still alive, still there to fight, was enough to get Elizabeth through the next disaster that was thrown at her.

Forcing the traitorous John-thoughts to the back of her mind—she had yet to find a way to banish any John-thoughts completely— Elizabeth allowed Simon to lead her into the house, Sedge happily circling Elizabeth as the three of them headed for the living room.

* * *

Sorry it's been a while. Hopefully the next chapter won't take as long to get out.

Love? Hate? Review!

TBC...


	13. Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

* * *

As Elizabeth sat down on the couch she couldn't help but silently go over everything that had changed in the room in the eleven months she had been gone.

The walls were a dull beige, not the pale 'Lovebird's Feather' blue that she had spent an entire Saturday carefully applying to the walls of the room, and the new colour made Elizabeth think of hospital waiting rooms. The couch wasn't her couch, wasn't the one that she had had shipped from DC, wasn't the one she had spent two weeks trying to decide on when she was setting up her place in DC nearly three years earlier. The television that she had simply had sitting on a small storage unit beside the phone was now sitting inside a truly hideous entertainment unit that took up nearly half of the room—which was why she had never even considered an entertainment centre for the rather small living room area. The phone wasn't the same one that she remembered, but she didn't think that was strange since the phone that she had had hadn't worked all that well and she had planned on replacing it herself before she was reassigned to Antarctica. The pictures that she had had around the room were no longer there, most replaced with pictures of Simon's family and paintings of dull geometric-shapes in primary colours that she had always found incredibly boring and, quite honestly, a waste of money and wall space. The bookcase, that covered the entire back wall of the room, was no longer holding her beloved books, her collection of first editions that her father had collected for her over the years, her favourite novels by Austen, Chekhov, Milton, Hardy, Kafka, Twain, Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Gogels and Welty were missing from their places of honour, and the three different translations of the collected works of the mysterious Homer were also absent; instead the shelves were lined with thin paperbacks with virgin, unbroken spines and a few hardcovers that Elizabeth vaguely recognized from before she left, as well as the all-too-familiar medical texts and journals that Simon always seemed to be collecting but that she never, in all honesty, saw him actually read.

Elizabeth hoped that her belongings were simply boxed up and put away somewhere. That Simon had decided, after she left that first video to him, that he would try to make the house more his own, but that he would keep her belongings because she would come back to him.

Desperately trying to convince herself that she cared more for the man sitting across from her in a chair that wasn't hers than she did her belongings—though she couldn't help herself from wondering, and hoping, that he had thought to replace the crystal candlesticks her grandmother had left her in her will in their case before packing them away—Elizabeth forced herself to begin the conversation that she knew needed to happen no matter how badly she wanted to just avoid it. Sedge, who she had never encouraged to get up on the furniture, jumped up on the couch beside Elizabeth. Normally Elizabeth would have scooted the large white dog down off the couch, but at that moment the warm weight of Sedge's head resting on her thigh and her body pressed up against the side of her leg was a great comfort. And comfort, it seemed, was something in short supply at the moment, and she was willing to grab onto any shred of it whenever she could.

"So… how have you been?" Elizabeth asked, immediately cringing as the words came out of her mouth. "Wow, that was even more pathetic an opening line than it was in my head," she apologized.

"Its okay, Elizabeth. This is supposed to be awkward."

Elizabeth arched an eyebrow. "You have experience with this? Had a lot of women leave you for another galaxy?" she asked. Simon didn't respond. "Lame. Again. And glib. Again, sorry."

"I've been good," Simon said, brushing aside her apology. "Busy," he added after a few seconds of tense silence.

"Good. Busy is good. And good is… good. Too," Elizabeth replied, her tone strained.

"Yeah. Good," Simon agreed dully.

* * *

There were a million reasons that John was oh-so-thankful for Elizabeth and her tireless belief in him, and why he was relieved beyond words that General O'Neill hadn't even blinked when John had told him that whether he went on the mission or not was very much about him despite the fact that there was something bigger and so completely amorphous that it was hard to even begin to comprehend out there.

After Elizabeth had asked him to join the expedition and General O'Neill had badgered him the entire flight back to McMurdo (interspersing the slightly-fatherly nagging with stories that seemed so fantastical and insane to John at the time) and John had agreed—though reluctantly, and mostly because agreeing meant a free trip back to the States and away from the constant snow and ice of the last continent he had to set foot on—there had been a huge weight released from his shoulders.

Of course, that old weight was immediately replaced with an even heavier load, the fate of not only the expedition but also the Pegasus Galaxy and the Milky Way as well, was dropped on him by two acts: the mercy killing of Colonel Marshall Sumner and the skewering of the Wraith Queen who was in charge of keeping all the other Wraith tucked in bed or whatever for the next fifty years or so. Both deaths were at his hand, and, while rationally he knew that the Wraith were set to wake up fairly soon anyway and his speeding up the process might not have actually meant anything in the long run because he knew he couldn't be the only one stupid and crazy enough in the galaxy to try to get his people back, there was a part of him, a very small part that Elizabeth and Teyla and Kate Heightmeyer the base therapist all tried very hard to stamp down, that believed that if he hadn't killed Sumner and the Wraith Queen—or maybe just the Queen, since Sumner had been shooting John pleading 'kill me' looks that John had tried to ignore until he realized just how much pain the Colonel was in—all the people that had been culled since then would still be alive. Elizabeth said he was crazy whenever he brought it up. Teyla would serenely utter some Athosian maxim about guilt being the root of something or other. And Kate would tell him that they needed _'to work on the god complex he was beginning to develop and could he come in three times a week for hour-long sessions?'_ to which he would always reply with a resounding 'no'.

Going to Atlantis was something John couldn't imagine not doing now that he'd spent nearly a year in the mythic city. Being back on Earth had been something that everyone seemed to be striving for during that nearly-a-year; almost from the moment they arrived in Pegasus it seemed like half the time they were defending themselves and the other half they were trying to get back to Earth. But, like many things, once they actually got what they wanted the reality was a massive let-down.

Apart from the debriefings and the belittling by superior officers and not seeing Elizabeth whenever he wanted to there was one thing about Earth that was driving John completely nuts.

People kept calling him 'Shep'.

It was just another thing that John missed about Atlantis—the list was reaching epic proportions, the likes of which he didn't have anything to liken to except for possibly the Christmas list his sister Angela had had the year John was five and Angela had wanted everything from hair clip things to a pony. On Atlantis he never had to respond to names other than 'John', 'Major', 'Sheppard', or 'sir', or, occasionally, some combination of the four. On Earth, though, it seemed that he had a different moniker for every person he encountered. The ever-generic 'you there' was popular, as was 'airman' and 'hey you with the hair'. He had even met up with an old buddy stationed at Area 51 who enjoyed calling him 'moron' among other more colourful names whenever they saw each other.

All that he could deal with though. He knew that being a visitor on a base generally meant that you were unwanted in one way or another, and as for his old buddy… well, John had some names for him, too, and none of them were complimentary.

What John hated most, though, was being called 'Shep'.

Like all pilots he had a call sign. Marines, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, National Guard, whatever branch of service all pilots had call signs. It was something that happened when you get certified on your first bird, oftentimes even before that. Just like the shiny gold wings that he, thankfully, didn't have to wear every day (except that while he was at Nellis he had to wear them unless he was in a flight suit, and then there was a pair of wings sewn onto the fabric of the flight suit) having a call sign was a rite of passage for any flyer. John honestly couldn't remember what unimaginative soul had saddled him with 'Shep' but, to his extreme dismay, the call sign as stuck after flight training, through four war-zone deployments, a near Court Marshall, and, finally, to his exile at McMurdo.

No one on Atlantis called him 'Shep'.

John had arrived in Nevada twelve hours earlier, had been assigned quarters in the BOQ where he had dropped his small bag of clothes and his laptop, as well as the crate and a half of files on potential military personnel for the next wave of the Atlantis expedition, and then he had been given a thick package of information on the X-302's that he needed to read before he could actually see the inside of one. He'd read everything in the package twice, most of it just reiterating what Sam had told him before he left Colorado, then he had been introduced to a scientist who was basically a plane captain with a PhD who had given him a perfunctory tour of one of the 303's before being called away with some emergency in one of the labs.

Since he couldn't do any actual training until the next day—though he had tried, casually, to get started that night; the person he'd talked to had thought he was an eager Flyboy looking for a new fast ride while, really, as much as he was that eager Flyboy looking for a new fast ride, the reason he wanted to get started was that he wanted to get his training over with as soon as he could so that he could get back to Colorado Springs. If anyone were to ask him, though he couldn't think of anyone who would, he wanted to get back so that he could start interviewing people for positions in the military section of the City. The truth, however, was that he missed Elizabeth more than he should have considering how many times a day they talked on the phone. Still, he was used to seeing her at least a handful of times a day, talking to her whenever he wanted to, and hanging out with her when he got bored which happened a lot if he was in the City with nothing to do for too long. And being back on Earth was worse because all the places he'd been—Colorado Springs, Nellis Air Force Base—he had been before, so after he'd explored the SGC and made sure to purchase all the things he'd been asked by friends back in the City to bring from Earth, he'd been bored in Colorado Springs, and he had barely been at Area 51 for a day and already he was bored out of his skull. Of course, it didn't help matters that he wasn't allowed to go exploring beyond the hanger, the R-and-D lab for the 302's, and the general base area outside the actual structure of Area 51, and the fact that the only person stationed at Groom Lake that he knew was someone he didn't particularly like certainly didn't help.

All those things, plus the fact that he wasn't feeling very social , were why, after finding out that he couldn't start training until the morning, John had gone back to his quarters at the BOQ and started to go through personnel files. He was pretty certain that he wasn't going to be the military leader of the expedition for much longer, and, while any decision on personnel he made while he was could easily be overturned by the new commander, having nothing to show for all the time he'd been on Earth was no way to keep his place on AR-1 at the very least.

Flopping down in a chair at the desk John opened the first file.

Young Marine, Lieutenant Laura Cadman. High temperature and energetic materials expert. Expert marksman. Two years off-world experience with SG-19. He wasn't quite sure how she'd gotten into the Marines with her diminutive height—she measured out at five feet two inches—but there was no indication in her file that she had ever been unable to do something because she was of a smaller stature. Her proving day—the day that SG team trainees were put into a real-world situation where they had to prove that they could do what needed to be done while only trusting each other—had been run by SG-1 three years earlier and then-Colonel O'Neill had nothing but good things to say about her performance. John read more of the Lieutenant's background and didn't see anything that would indicate a reason for him not to pick her.

Closing her file he put it in a pile that he decided would be for those he wanted to interview once he returned to the SGC. Only so much about a person could be learned from their service record, after all.

With a sigh, John reached for the next file, hoping everyone who had applied for positions on the trip back to Atlantis were as qualified as Lieutenant Cadman... and doubting that that was the case.

* * *

Simon had gone to make coffee, something he was horrible at—in Elizabeth's opinion, anyway—and Elizabeth was taking a call from the SGC. Even though Simon had clearance it only extended so far, and what she was hearing at that moment was nowhere near the level Simon's clearance reached, so she was whispering and praying that the bug jammers that had been installed in the house when she moved in—standard issue precautionary measure, she had been assured, though the thought made her nervous in the beginning—were still active and working.

"I thought they weren't supposed to di—_call_ until tomorrow afternoon," Elizabeth hissed barely catching herself before saying something that, while normal enough to pass basic scrutiny, would raise alarms if anyone was really trying to parse what she was saying.

The fact that she was suddenly extremely paranoid was not lost on Elizabeth, but she didn't know why she was suddenly feeling that way.

"_I don't know what to say to you, Doctor Weir. They… called. I'll have Colonel Carter explain why when she gets a chance. Bottom line, though, is that they're going to call back in one hour. I suggest you get back here in the next… forty-two minutes,"_ General Landry replied, "_if you want to talk to anyone in back there before they check in again next week."_

There were, as General Landry well knew, a hundred things that Elizabeth needed to talk to Teyla and Zelenka and a few others about, and she knew that if she waited until the next week things would get forgotten in the midst of everything else she had to deal with.

"I'll be there," Elizabeth said firmly, though she was already mentally calculating how far above the speed limit she could control the massive SUV the SGC had given her to drive if she felt the need to leave the base.

Simon reappeared in the den just as Elizabeth was thanking General Landry for his call and promising him that she'd see him soon.

"You have to leave," Simon said, no hint of a question in his tone. They'd been together for five years before she'd gone to Atlantis; he knew that when she got a phone call and it ended with her forehead scrunching up the way it did when she was calculating times and distances in her head it meant that she had to leave, right away. It was the reason why the front closet used to contain suitcases for every conceivable climate, as well as a few gowns in the event of a formalwear event, all coded and labelled. Oftentimes the only way Simon knew what part of the world Elizabeth was being called away to was by which set of luggage she had taken with her. Red tags for the Middle-East. Green tags for Asia. Yellow tags for Russia. White tags for anything that took her to Geneva. Black tags for anything that took her to the UN building in New York. And, of course, the purple tags that he didn't remember her ever using until after he had moved all the way to Colorado Springs and gotten settled only to have to say goodbye to Elizabeth once again, this time with her taking the purple tagged bags, the ones that were for icy climate negotiations.

"Just for a few hours. But… I'd really like to talk. Actually talk. Can we do that?" Elizabeth asked hopefully. "Maybe over dinner?"

"Pick something up on your way back here. I don't feel like cooking tonight," Simon said. "And I have a feeling that this isn't going to be a conversation that we can have in a crowded restaurant."

"No, it's not," Elizabeth admitted. "Okay, good. I'll call you when I'm on my way back, find out what kind of food you want. After eating military rations and alien cuisine for ten months… well, my taste buds need to readjust to food from this planet that wasn't packaged during the Cold War," she said as she clutched the fabric of her coat in one hand and fingered the keys to the monstrous SUV in the other. "Okay. Bye," she said before hurrying toward the door, half thankful for the escape General Landry had given her and half hating that what little momentum she may have gained in having the conversation she was dreading was lost.

* * *

_Not the world's best chapter, but I think I'm dreading writing the Simon/Elizabeth convorsation as much as Elizabeth is dreading having it. **READER POLL: Do you guys want me to go right into it, or would you rather I wrote some contact with Atlantis stuff before Elizabeth and the ass finally talk?**_

_Since my beta asked me about these two military-isms I figured I'd put them down here just in case anyone else was wondering what they meant._

_**Plane Captain**: the (enlisted) man/woman who acts as a mechanic for a plane. On carriers (Navy) each PC has his/her own plane that they are responsible for. On bases it's usually the same, though I took some artistic license with the PC being a civillian PhD since, on the show, the X-302's were built/developed by civillian scientists with military assistance._

_**BOQ**: I may have explained this one before, but I'll do it again because my beta asked me what it meant when she was going over this chapter. **BOQ** is the short version of Bachelor Officer's Quarters. **BEQ** or **BEOQ** is Bachelor Enlisted (Officer's) Quarters. Since John is a commissioned officer he would stay in the BOQ._


	14. Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

* * *

Simon lived in Elizabeth's house (he had forgotten to attend the meeting with the lawyer to make it _their_ house) in the Stratmoor Hills-Quail Lake Park area on Witches Willow Lane which, in ideal conditions, wasn't more than twenty minutes away from Cheyenne Mountain. Traffic wasn't too heavy, though Elizabeth found that her patience for other drivers in general, while usually fairly quite high, was practically non-existent. No cars and no traffic was another thing that she mentally added to the ever-growing list of reasons she couldn't wait to get back to Atlantis. 

At a red light that she knew from experience was annoyingly long—if you were unlucky enough to miss it you could wait for upwards of ten minutes before cars in your lane even got the opportunity to move again—Elizabeth hooked up her trusty hands-free cell phone headset and dialled the number that she had found herself calling more often than she was entirely comfortable with the pencil-pushers that would receive the cell bill knowing about.

"_Sheppard,"_ the familiar and comforting voice of her second in command answered.

"Hey," Elizabeth said, suddenly hoping she hadn't interrupted anything. She knew that John was at Area 51 for a reason, that he was there to master X-302's, but the idea of him not always being just a radio call away, was hard for Elizabeth to wrap her head around. The only time he was ever out of contact was when he was in trouble, which she supposed was a contributing factor to her ever-present concern for her second in command. "Sorry, is this a bad time?"

"_Nah. There's this weird_ laissez-faire _attitude to my supposed training that is, quite frankly, far from reassuring,"_ John replied. _"I've spent most of the day going over potential additions to the military contingent."_

"Well, at least you're getting some work done," Elizabeth said, not entirely comfortable with how nervous she felt.

"_There is that,"_ John agreed. _"So what's up? I mean, not that I mind the spur-of-the-moment calls 'cause they're great for breaking up the day and it's heartening to know that you haven't been eaten alive by the politics that I, thankfully, get to avoid for the most part, but you usually have a reason for calling me."_

"Uh, yeah, actually. I'm on my way to the base. Apparently Teyla called earlier and she's going to call again in, like, half an hour, so I'm trying to get back to the Mountain in time to pass some messages along to people back home."

"_I thought they weren't going to call until next week,"_ John said. Elizabeth could hear the frown in his voice and she could easily imagine his brow furrowing.

With a sigh she nodded. "Me too. Landry says that he'll get Colonel Carter to tell me why Teyla called early when there's time. Probably some time-change thing that we haven't had to deal with yet."

"_Probably,"_ John agreed. _"Uh… I can't think of anything that is pressing. Just say hi to everyone and… oh, can you make sure Zelenka checks out Jumper Six? It was doing this weird pulling-to-the-right thing that I'd really like fixed before we get back and I have to start training new people to fly them."_

"Jumper Six is pulling to the right. Got it," Elizabeth said, making a mental note of John's request. "So training isn't going so well?" she asked sympathetically.

John let out a bitter chuckle. _"Understatement. After I went over the paper crap—which Samantha gave me the lowdown on before I left the base—I got about two minutes in the hanger bay with one of the techs but he got called away and I got sent back to my room. I've gone through about two dozen files since I got back here."_

"Anyone good?"

"_A few of them show promise for what we deal with, but I'm not wild about judging people by what's in their file. Glass houses and all that,"_ John said and Elizabeth nodded even though she knew John couldn't see the motion. She had always known that what was written down was hardly ever the full story, especially when it came to something as unclassifiable as people. It was why she hadn't cared about the fact that John's record before Atlantis was a mixture of 'amazing pilot'-type comments and 'disciplinary pain in the ass' variations and, of course, the infamous black mark from Afghanistan. Hell, half of the military personnel she had under her command had some kind of negative mark on their record that was stopping them from moving their careers forward on Earth—it was part of why they had agreed to leave the Milky Way in the first place. _"What's that noise? You're not driving are you?"_ John asked.

"How else was I supposed to get to the SGC?" Elizabeth frowned.

"_You really shouldn't use your phone while you're driving,"_ John said sternly.

"Yes, _dad_," Elizabeth said, rolling her eyes. John uttered a semi-intelligible grunt of disapproval in response. "This really bugs you, huh?" Elizabeth asked seriously.

"_Very much,"_ John replied honestly.

As she changed lanes in preparation for exiting onto the road that would take her right up to NORAD and the SGC Elizabeth sighed softly. "Okay. I'll hang up then. Talk to you later?"

"_Definitely. And check your e-mail. I sent you the names of a few people I think would be able to hack it in our neck of the woods,"_ John said. _"Remember about Jumper Six,"_ he added.

"It's burned into my brain," Elizabeth promised. "Stay safe," she added before hanging up, only a moment before John echoed the sentiment so many miles away.

* * *

Using the new calculating system to determine the time and date differences between Lantia and Earth that Colonel Carter had sent through the last time Teyla had dialled the Tau'ri home world Teyla and Radek determined the exact time that they should dial Earth again. It was the middle of the night, Atlantis time, but everyone was so accustomed to the bizarre hours and days on end without rest that staying up a little late when things were calm wasn't exactly a hardship for Teyla and Zelenka, the two who were sharing the roles that Elizabeth, John, and Rodney usually filled—Doctor Biro was running the Infirmary with the help of a few doctors that the **Daedalus** had brought from Earth when the arrived to help defend the Lost City. 

The Wraith still thought Atlantis was gone, destroyed by its current inhabitants as a way of keeping both the knowledge of the Ancients and the access to Earth and the new feeding ground it represented from the enemy, and most off-world travel was on hold in an attempt to maintain the ruse. Several Athosian teams had been sent to other worlds where Atlantis and the Athosians had trade partners, all visits conducted via the Alpha Site to prevent being traced, and the rumour that the great city of the Ancients had been destroyed was spread carefully enough that it didn't come off false but insistently enough that word spread across the galaxy with little effort.

A few AR team members had gone off-world to collect raw materials for repairing the city and things like that, but they always went in disguise, usually as Athosians, sometimes in the dress of whatever culture they were planning on trading with or taking from, and, though they were always armed, they used weapons that weren't traceable to the people of Earth, mostly weapons collected from the Genii after their attempted raid of Atlantis and some weaponry that a few of the military and science types had gotten together to create from scratch. Teyla, herself, hadn't stepped through the Stargate, spending most of her days either in Elizabeth's office or working with the military faction of the city to maintain John's usual routine since neither John, nor Ford, not the annoying but ultimately decent Sergeant Bates was there to head up the military. Zelenka, of course, had only been through the Stargate once, when he came to Atlantis, and he was more than happy keeping it that way, spending most of his time working with the team that was studying the ZPM that had saved their collective asses several weeks earlier.

The Control Room was eerily quiet and annoyingly empty as Teyla and Radek waited for the time to come for their scheduled check in. They had dialled in earlier in the day, early that morning, in fact, for the first of two scheduled check ins that were to take place over the time that the leaders of Atlantis' four main areas were back on Earth, only to be told by General Landry that they were a week early. Colonel Carter, who Teyla only knew from stories that McKay told but who Zelenka knew quite well from back on Earth, posited that days were shorter on Atlantis which made time seem to go faster and the culmination of extra hours became days that passed ahead of Earth which was why they had dialled in a week earlier than those in the Milky Way expected. Zelenka and Carter had started talking rather quickly in what Teyla knew was English, though she recognized few of the words, and she had tuned them out for the most part, only listening when Zelenka said something about making sure a special clock was made to prevent such a mistake from happening again. Once that was out of the way Teyla asked to speak with Doctor Weir or Major Sheppard, preferably both—Radek had everything that McKay needed to know uploaded onto the compression matrix that McKay had developed when they all thought it would be their last chance to share thoughts and words with loved ones, and had sent it through to Colonel Carter who promised to pass it along the moment she saw him next.

General Landry had apologized, saying that Major Sheppard was in Nevada at Area 51 for flight training and wouldn't be back for several days at best. Teyla didn't know what or where Nevada was, nor what Area 51 meant—though she made a mental note to find out as soon as she could find a free moment—but she knew what flight training was as John had often spoken of his initial days in flight training in the Academy, usually with great fondness. The General went on to say that Doctor Weir was back from Washington (another place that Teyla had no concept of and made a mental note to ask about when she inquired about Nevada and Area 51) but that she was currently off the base taking a bit of personal time. It was then, with some encouragement from Colonel Carter, that General Landry agreed to call Doctor Weir in as long as Teyla dialled in again in one hour, earth time.

Once Zelenka promised he knew how long that meant for them, Teyla agreed and they cut power to the wormhole.

Ever since then they had been going about their work, and, of course, waiting. There was a lot of waiting going on. More than even the eternally patient Teyla Emmagen could handle. Thankfully Sergeant Tucker was always up for a stick-fight. He had taken to the practise better than anyone else, and, though his movements were still less than graceful, he was more than proficient with the Bantos rods. She enjoyed sparring with him. And it didn't hurt that he was cute, Teyla admitted, though she realized that Earth had a plethora of social taboos, especially when it came to romance in the workplace. Her people never had that problem. She didn't know of any culture in Pegasus that did, to be honest. Romance usually led to sex which often led to children which meant there was another generation to keep your people alive. Teyla guessed, though, that since Earth had been almost completely isolated from alien interference until the Stargate Program had begun several years earlier, that keeping the population up was not much of a concern. A friend of hers had even told her that some parts of Earth had too many people and that families were forced to have only one child at most because of overpopulation. The entire concept was mind-boggling to Teyla. A lot of things about Earth were mind-boggling to Teyla.

"Please explain to me again how we have lost seven days," Teyla requested of Radek who was tapping away at his laptop in the Control Room at the station next to where the Athosian leader had taken up residence. "I still do not understand how it is possible," she added, only somewhat meekly. Since Rodney and Elizabeth and John and Carson had left Atlantis and Teyla and Radek had been in charge she had gotten to know the quirky scientist quite well, and was no longer afraid to admit that she didn't understand a concept in front of him. It was a level of trust she had yet to achieve with many other people, including her team mates, though she trusted them deeply on many other levels.

Pushing up his glasses with one hand while saving his work with the other Radek turned his chair so that he was facing Teyla. That was something that Teyla appreciated about Radek. He didn't multi-task, as Rodney put it, unless he absolutely had to. He was willing to pause in his work to speak to someone, not just continue working and look up when something caught his interest like Rodney did.

"A day is measured by one full rotation of the planet."

"Around the sun," Teyla nodded.

"No," Radek said, shaking his head. He was stammering and stuttering a lot less without the constant pressures—situational or related to a certain Canadian astrophysicist with a big mouth and an even bigger ego—bearing down on him. "That is a year. A day is one full rotation of the planet around its axis."

"Axis… that's the invisible line that runs through the planet that it spins around, correct?" Teyla said, hoping she was right.

Along with her duties as temporary co-leader of Atlantis Teyla had been trying to learn more of the basic sciences of Earth. Chemistry was easy enough as it was much like following recipes. She wasn't a very good cook, Teyla knew, but the few experiments she had done in the Chemistry lab with her tutor had gone quite well… at least that was what she was told. Biology was less of a success, though Doctor Biro had made sure that her field medical training was up to date and that she knew how to administer a dose of epinephrine should Rodney ingest citrus on one of their missions. The other sciences like Botany and Marine Sciences and the more specific subsets of what she were told the three main branches of science—chemistry, biology, and physics—she hadn't exactly gotten around to, though she had borrowed a few books from several departments to read in her resting hours.

"Correct," Zelenka nodded and Teyla smiled, pleased that she had been correct and that no one was around to shrug her personal accomplishment off. "Earth's day-long rotation takes approximately twenty-four hours. Lantia's day-long rotation takes approximately thirty-two hours. However, we have used a system of one-point-three-three-bar hours here being equivalent to one hour on Earth which makes an hour on Atlantis eighty minutes long instead of sixty."

Teyla frowned. "This is where I get confused. My people have always risen with the sun, slumbered not long after dark, and worked during the daylight hours, stopping halfway through the day for a meal."

Zelenka nodded. "It is difficult to grasp," he agreed sympathetically.

"Can you take me through it? Step by step?" Teyla requested. "That might help," she added.

Since they still had another forty minutes before the hour was up—they had been waiting for forty minutes already—Radek didn't see the harm in explaining the time problem to Teyla.

"Alright. One day on Earth is twenty-four hours long."

"I know that," Teyla nodded.

"When we arrived here from Earth we noticed that the days and nights were longer."

"Yes, I remember. Several people were going to their quarters at odd hours for rest in the initial weeks that we were here," Teyla agreed. She had had no such problem, rising with the sun every morning and going to bed not long after the sun went down again at night, just as she had since she was a little girl.

Radek nodded. "We could not find any indication of how long a day and night on this planet lasted, and no test we attempted worked the way we wished it to, so it was decided that we would maintain the use of Earth's twenty-four hour clock."

"Yes, though the concept of telling time for twenty-four hours on a clock that only goes to twelve has never made sense to me."

"Which is why many use what people on Earth call 'military time', meaning instead of one in the afternoon it's thirteen-hundred hours. Still, though, no less confusing, I assume."

"John had attempted to explain it to me many times. When I failed to grasp the concept he had Rodney make my watch vibrate fifteen minutes before and at the exact time that we agree to meet up again if we split up off-world. It causes a very strange sensation against my wrist, but I have yet to return late because I… what is it that your people say? Got lost in the track of time?"

"Lost track of time," Chuck corrected from a few feet away where he was dusting the control console. Ever since Grodin was killed and Chuck was promoted to head guy in charge of the Control Room he had been cleaning the room almost obsessively. It was rather unnerving.

"Yes, that is the idiom," Teyla nodded. "So… because Lantia has longer days… the twenty-four hour clock that we have used since establishing the base… doesn't work?"

Radek nodded. "Exactly. Colonel Carter was reading some of the Archival files that we sent back and she discovered that days on Lantia average at thirty-six hours."

"So… the extra twelve hours… somehow made us a week early for the check-in?" Teyla asked, not feeling much less confused than she had before Zelenka started explaining everything to her again.

"The extra hours here compounded over the last three weeks—on Earth—until we had, using the twenty-four hour clock, lost seven days," Zelenka said, nodding.

Teyla let out a heavy sigh. "I still do not see how such a thing is possible, but as we have a way to correct this now I believe I will cease to worry about it," she decided.

That decision made Teyla picked up the tablet she had been clutching for most of the day and tapped in a few commands until she found the file she was looking for; a file she had prepared on her own people for someone she had never met and didn't know or trust, though she had heard about him over the past ten months from time to time. Elizabeth had told her that Doctor Daniel Jackson loved studying other cultures, that languages were his passion, and that he was the reason that the people of Earth had been able to come to Pegasus both ten months earlier and only a few weeks ago; for that, alone, Teyla was willing to give him a bit of a break, though she still wasn't sure she was entirely comfortable with a total stranger from another galaxy knowing details about her people and their history. Still, Elizabeth had promised that his intentions were nothing but honourable and Teyla trusted Elizabeth implicitly.

A minute and two paragraphs later—she was re-editing for the fifth time that day—Teyla turned to Zelenka again. "So an hour is now no longer sixty minutes long but eighty instead?" she said with a frown that furrowed her brow slightly.

* * *

Feeling a little self conscious in jeans with gaping holes in the knees—her most comfortable pair, all soft and wash-worn, faded just the right amount in just the right places—and a tee shirt she'd bought at a concert back in her senior year of high school, Elizabeth tapped her tennis-shod foot while the second of two elevators descended deep into the mountain. She hadn't planned on coming back to the SGC that day, intending on spending her twenty-four hours without official work off-base. With Simon, she mentally reiterated, though the thought of checking into a hotel or hitting the mall had also been considered when she initially left the SGC after her marathon meeting with Landry that morning. Her clothing choices were more than appropriate for any of the tentatively planned options; casual enough for the mall and comfortable enough for the conversation with Simon with the added bonus of thick strings of cotton fibres to pick at if she needed something to distract herself with when—and she knew it would be when—things got too heavy or tense. She had changed out of her conservative pantsuit, purchased in DC, in one of the bathrooms by the parking lot and had stashed her suit in the back of the SUV she'd been given and, when Landry called and told her to get back to the Mountain if she wanted to talk to Atlantis, she had planned on quickly changing again before going to the Control Room to wait for Atlantis to dial in. Unfortunately she had taken longer getting to the SGC than she would have liked and, knowing that she had at least fifteen minutes of security checks ahead of her when she parked the car, she simply grabbed all the ID she knew she would need and rushed for the elevator. If anyone thought any less of her for wearing jeans a little past their prime and a concert tee where the band name and tour info was cracked and faded then so be it, she had decided as she signed in with the guard after stepping off the first elevator. She was comfortable, she had been pulled in on her off hours after not having off hours for the past year or so, and once she had checked in with Teyla she was going to leave again and experience what she knew was going to be a thoroughly uncomfortable conversation with a man she had left, physically, a year earlier, emotionally only about six months ago. 

The elevator car finally stopped and the doors opened up onto Level 28. When she had been in charge of the SGC she had figured out the fastest routes from any point to the Control Room. From the surface it was faster to go to the level below the Control Room, cut through the Gateroom, and go up the stairs just outside Corridor C. It was nearly a minute faster than going through the Briefing Room and down the spiral staircase, and it was almost two minutes faster than taking the rather circuitous route through the halls.

When she entered the Gateroom the first thing she did was flick her eyes to the Stargate. She could see right through the large stone ring—it was strange, the chevrons being red instead of blue, the inner ring made to turn instead of the constellations just lighting up in turn, the metal ramp leading up to the 'Gate instead of the 'Gate being set into the floor of the Atlantis Gateroom's raised platform—to the industrial walls and pipes and conduits behind, no shimmering event horizon in sight. Elizabeth breathed an internal sigh of relief—Landry would have called her, or Walter Harriman would have, if Atlantis had already made contact again—and padded across the room, walking with purpose and ignoring the looks she was getting from the SF's in the cavernous room.

The Control Room was fairly devoid of life, another thing that was annoyingly different from Atlantis. The Control Room she was used to was always bustling, always full of people reading off of the temperamental Ancient screens or futzing with interfaces or accessing the Ancient Database since the strongest link outside of the Holo-room was in the Control Room. The Control Room on Earth, however, was a narrow space with hulking supercomputers lining the walls and three chairs, all in front of vital consoles and therefore not places to just sit unless you were using said vital consoles, and the only person who was constantly there was the ranking 'Gate technician, most often newly-promoted Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman. The short technician was in his usual seat, reading a book that had obviously been through several readings as it was in a rather sad condition, and he looked up from his reading and nodded at Elizabeth as she headed for the stairs that would lead her up to Landry's office. She figured she might as well check in with the General since there weren't a lot of places in the SGC where one could simply wait around for something to happen. At least, there weren't when you didn't have an office or lab of your own to hole up in. And, as Elizabeth was very much aware of, her office wasn't even in the same galaxy as the subterranean structure she was in.

"You look… different," Landry observed by way of a greeting when Elizabeth appeared in the doorway to his office.

"Well I'm wearing flats," Elizabeth replied dryly. "How long until Atlantis dials back in?"

Landry checked his watch. "Any minute now, Doctor," he answered.

"Good," Elizabeth said, not leaving her position in the doorway. She had seen the office Landry now occupied go through many leaders. General Hammond, whose belongings she had worked around for several days, uncomfortable being in the office that so obviously did not belong to her. Then herself, though she was hardly at the SGC long enough to establish any kind of decoration in the small room, mostly filling shelves with books and enough photographs to convince herself that she wasn't in a dungeon twenty-six floors below the surface. Then General O'Neill, whose decoration style was much like General Hammond's, though with some flairs that were so very Jack that the difference in the offices was as glaring as the difference in the men. And now General Landry, who hadn't quite gotten around to moving in yet, though there was a small basketball net set up against one wall that added a curious new angle to the man seated before her.

"My daughter was grounded for a month after sneaking out to see the Bangles," Landry commented, the random sentence breaking into Elizabeth's office-musings.

Elizabeth frowned. "Excuse me?"

"Your shirt. When Carolyn was fourteen she snuck out of the house with a bunch of her girlfriends and hitchhiked their way to a Bangles concert. I was actually home at the time, something that didn't happen when Carolyn was growing up. Her mother decided it would be good for me to be in charge of punishing her. That was the first time Carolyn ever told me she hated me," Landry said. He shook his head, chuckling. "Its strange, the things you think about sometimes."

"I'm sure the fact that your new CMO just happens to be said daughter had nothing to do with that errant thought," Elizabeth teased lightly. She didn't have the heart to point out to Landry that 'Vacation' was the Go-Go's, not the Bangles.

Landry shrugged. "Maybe. I could kill Jack for not telling me about that little fact before I took over here, you know?"

"General O'Neill is… full of surprises," Elizabeth said diplomatically.

The once-familiar sound of stone scraping over stone made Elizabeth jump ever so slightly, though she was able to cover the fact that she had been startled by turning to peer through the large window in the briefing room that overlooked the Stargate. Holding her breath, Elizabeth counted the Chevrons as they locked.

One…

Two…

Three…

Four…

Five…

Six…

Seven…

Then came what felt like the longest dramatic pause of her life…

And eight.

The 'kawoosh' was the most welcome sight Elizabeth had been lucky enough to bear witness to and when she heard Walter's PA-enhanced voice announce that it was Atlantis' IDC it took all of the self control she possessed to refrain from running down the stairs like an overeager prom date.

When she got back down to the Control Room she immediately headed for the two-way view screen that Walter was pointing to. "The feed is up, ma'am," Walter said, though it was unnecessary as Elizabeth could clearly see the Control Room on Atlantis, Chuck sitting off to one side behind the DHD console, Teyla hurrying gracefully across the bridge that led to Elizabeth's office, Zelenka's body moving into frame as he slid his rolling chair in front of the view screen that matched the one Elizabeth was standing in front of.

"Radek, Teyla, how's my city?" Elizabeth asked, a smile spreading across her face, both at the sight of her friends and at the visual assurance that, not only did Atlantis exist outside of her memories, but that it was still standing.

"_Atlantis is well, Elizabeth,"_ Teyla said with a smile.

"_Repairs to the damaged sections are ahead of schedule,"_ Zelenka put in.

"_My people have been assisting Doctor Zelenka and his team as much as possible in the City,"_ Teyla said.

Elizabeth smiled. She knew that Teyla often worried that the Athosians would grow weary of living on the Mainland having any battles fought for them and doing little more than grow some fruits and vegetables in return, so Elizabeth was glad that Teyla's people had found something they could help with. "That's great," Elizabeth said. "Any Wraith activity?"

"_None,"_ Teyla assured Elizabeth. _"My people have also been assisting in perpetuating the belief that Atlantis was destroyed. Word is already spreading beyond our trading partners to other planets, ones we have never been to."_

"Never thought I'd be glad people are perpetuating that belief," Elizabeth said. Teyla offered a sympathetic look in response.

"_I am sending a more detailed account of the past few weeks,"_ Teyla said as she tapped some commands into the tablet she was clutching.

Elizabeth glanced over at Walter who was staring intently at the screen in front of him. "Got it," Walter confirmed.

"We've got it," Elizabeth said turning back to face her Athosian and Czech friends. "It's good to see you guys," she said, feeling the tsunami of homesickness crash over her.

* * *

_TBC..._

_Love? Hate? Review!_

_A/N: I was going to go right into the Simon talk, mostly to get it over with because, well, I can't stand the character, but my beta asked me to write this to check in on how Atlantis was doing without its leaders. So... I tried. And... it turns out that I absolutely suck at writing Teyla and my Zelenka really doesn't feel right so... sorry._

_A/N/2: While, technically, I'm a child of the '90's (I was too young in the '80's to have many memories beyond vague recollections from the four and a half years that I was alive for) I am very much into the music of the '80's, especially the strong girl groups. The Bangles and the Go-Go's are two of my favourites._

_A/N/3: In the last chapter I had Elizabeth say to Landry over the phone that Teyla wasn't supposed to dial Earth until the next day. That was a typo. I did, in the beginning, intend on Teyla being a week early. I have no idea if my math or my logic is even anywhere near sound, but... well, there's a reason I write fiction and not science and math texts._

_Thanks for reading. Please let me know what you think about what I've done so far and what you would like to see in the near future._

_THE TALK will be in the next chapter... actually, it will probably be most of the next chapter._

_Manic Penguin_

_PS: the details (street names and distances from NORAD, which is on top of the SGC) aboutColorado Springs are real, according to the map site I went to, but I haven't been to Colorado since I was eight and I don't think we even stopped in CS._


	15. Chapter 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

* * *

Arriving at the house—she was having a hard time thinking of it as hers since she could was having a hard time thinking of Earth as her home—Elizabeth debated the to-knock-or-not-to-knock question as she parked her car. It was, technically, her house, but she had never really called it home, and for the past year her home had been the halls of Atlantis, so the house, though it belonged to her, was more Simon's than anyone else's. The answer to the internal knocking debate was handed to her when she realized that she had got too many bags of food to carry and open the door at the same time. 

After awkwardly pushing the doorbell button with her elbow Elizabeth waited, her arms full of heavy brown paper bags filled with Greek, Cantonese, and Italian food. Simon hadn't answered when she called on her way back from the SGC so she had gone to three of their old stand-bys. Of course, they had never had all three types of food in one night, but Elizabeth was tired of military rations and a few of the not so delicious Athosian dishes that she was certain were made from sewer rat—though she had yet to encounter either sewers or rats anywhere in the vicinity of any Athosian—and so she had given in to gluttony and selected all of her past favourite dishes, as well as a few that she knew Simon favoured. Sam had recommended several places when Elizabeth has asked what restaurants were good, since she hadn't eaten out much when she did live in Colorado Springs, spending most of her time at the SGC and eating in the Commissary and making food for herself if she happened to be home and hungry. 

Besides, Elizabeth rationalized, the more they ate the less they could say things that they would regret.

Simon answered the door and his eyes visibly widened at all the bags Elizabeth was carrying. "You planning on throwing an 'end of lockout' party?" he asked.

"What?" Elizabeth frowned.

"The NHL lockout. Which… you don't know about because you haven't been around for the past ten months," Simon said, slowly coming to the realization that Elizabeth had no idea what he was talking about.

"Simon, do you think that, even if I was in this galaxy, I would know about a… whatever it is you're talking about?" Elizabeth asked as she carried the bags, without any help from Simon, to the kitchen. "Or, for that matter, that I would care enough to throw a party when it ended?" Sports, after all, had never been Elizabeth's thing. She had played volleyball when she was in high school, and she usually watched a few random events during the Olympics if she had the time—and access to a television set—but she was definitely not what anyone would call a sports fan.

Simon nodded. "Fair point," he said as he went to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of water.

Elizabeth took all the containers out of the bags and laid them out on the kitchen table before going to a cupboard to grab some plates. The cupboard she opened, though, was filled with coffee mugs, which she had kept above the coffee maker on the other side of the room. Three cupboards later—and with no help from Simon who was picking at a flaky phyllo pastry—Elizabeth found the plates, though they weren't the ones she had had since she got her first place after college. Those plates had been heavy, white, with pale green vines of ivy decorating them. The plates that Simon had were large lightweight glass things with bunches of grapes bumping up all over the bottom. She decided not to even attempt to locate the cutlery drawer—it didn't seem like anything was the way it had been before she left—and, even though she wasn't wild about the idea, she just grabbed a plastic knife and fork that had been thrown into one of the bags and began filling her own plate, leaving Simon's on the counter for when he stopped simply picking at the dishes in their containers, a habit of his that she had always hated.

Once her plate was full of the dishes she decided she wanted, Elizabeth took at seat at the counter, the table too full of food for anyone to sit there. Simon took the hint and filled his own plate, sticking to a few standard dishes—chicken souvlaki, the rest of his filo pastry, some spaghetti, and a large helping of plain white rice that he quickly drowned in four packages of soy sauce—and took a seat two stools down from where Elizabeth sat.

The fact that he kept some distance between them was not lost on Elizabeth, but she didn't say anything about it. The situation was uncomfortable enough as it was.

Elizabeth fumbled around in her purse for the object that Sam had handed to her after the wormhole from Atlantis shut down. It was no bigger than a lipstick tube, but Elizabeth located it easily in her empty purse—she hadn't been back on Earth long enough to accumulate the kind of crap she used to carry around with her everywhere.

* * *

_Still coming off of the high from mere glimpses of her beloved city Elizabeth sank into a chair, ostensibly to wait for Walter to finish uploading the messages—those sent by Radek and Teyla—off of the SGC's mainframe onto Elizabeth's laptop. In actuality she felt shaken, partially by the realization that she wouldn't even get the chance to speak to anyone on Atlantis again until the **Daedalus** deposited them all back in the city, and partially by the reaffirmation of her responsibility as leader of the City of the Ancients. Usually when everything became simply too heavy for her to deal with _ _Elizabeth__ would seek out John who had a knack for lifting burdens from her shoulders. But she couldn't turn to John, both because he was in Nevada, hopefully actually training, and because she was beginning to grow concerned about just how often she found herself turning to someone else—to John, specifically—when she could very well handle the situation on her own. At the very least, she decided, she needed someone she could turn to who wasn't in mortal peril on a daily basis. _

_That was something she hadn't thought about, hadn't allowed herself to think about, until that moment when John stopped on the stairs up to the Jumper Bay, telling her that he had to, that she knew that he had to, while his eyes plead with her to not make his last act one of insubordination. Until that moment, or, rather, until the moment the Jumper blew up high above the City, _ _Elizabeth__ had never actually thought that John Sheppard would die. He, she had long since decided, was like Jack O'Neill or Daniel Jackson that way. Too stubborn to die, and too smart to stay dead for long if sheer stubbornness wasn't enough. But when that Jumper blew up _ _Elizabeth__ had thought, however briefly, that John Sheppard was dead. _

_To lose her tether to hope and reality and sanity like that was the scariest thing _ _Elizabeth__ could think of, and the fact that she would be losing her best friend in the same moment shook her to the darkest depths of her soul. _

_"Doctor Weir, the files have been transferred," Walter said, holding out her laptop. Judging by the look on his face _ _Elizabeth__ realized that he had tried to get her attention more than once. _

_Blushing slightly, _ _Elizabeth__ took the laptop from the technician and uttered a soft and slightly apologetic 'thank you' as she tucked the computer into the leather case that worked so well with her suits but looked a little odd when paired with her current attire. _

_"Colonel Carter asked me to get you to stop by her lab before you leave," Walter continued, allowing her appreciation and apology roll off him. He was just doing his job, after all, and more often than not his actions, especially those above and beyond the call of duty—his ability to know what the General needed before he was asked for it, among other things, being a prime example—being ignored or simply accepted as the norm. He had been with the Stargate Program since just before General West left and General Hammond came in, and Walter knew that he was damned lucky to have the job he did for as long as he had. More than ten years, three promotions, five CO's, and more than twenty System Lords later he was still doing what he loved, where he wanted to be, doing his part in keeping the galaxy safe and free. Hell, for a while he had been doing his part not only for the Milky Way but for other galaxies as well. The two Asgard galaxies—because the Replicator plague had all-but destroyed their original home galaxy of Ida, the Asgard had moved to their current home galaxy which none of the Asgard had yet to mention the name of—and Pegasus were also, in a way, under his care. Earth was, after all, the only Stargate that they knew of in the Milky Way with the extra control crystal that allowed eight symbols to be dialled into the DHD, or, in their case, the computer that substituted for the DHD. _

_"Thank you, Walter," Elizabeth said, shouldering her bag and offering the technician a soft smile before heading out of the Control Room and quickly crossing through the hallway to the elevators, not feeling up to climbing the stairs from Level 28 where the Stargate resided to Level 19 where Sam's lab was located. _

_She found Sam's lab easily, despite having avoided the lab for the most part whenever she was at the SGC. Tapping on the doorframe with her knuckles _ _Elizabeth__ lingered in the doorway until Sam waved her in, barely looking up from the cupboard she was emptying out onto the floor. _

_"Packing?" _ _Elizabeth__ observed. _

_"Nine years of accumulated crap that's been stuffed into cupboards and drawers and forgotten about," Sam said, frowning at a thin binder that she had pulled from the back of the cupboard. "I stopped looking for this almost five years ago," she said, letting out a frustrated huff before struggling to her feet. "How are things in Atlantis?" she asked as she threw the binder onto the main table. _

_Elizabeth__ shrugged. "I've got some reports to read but everything seems to be… as good as can be expected after the kind of battle we had." _

_"That's good to hear," Sam said. _

_"Yeah," _ _Elizabeth__ said, nodding. "Walter said you wanted to see me?" _

_"Right," Sam nodded. "Uh… here," she said, grabbing a small device off the centre table. "I… uh… I know it's not really my place, but I know you plan on going to see Doctor Wallace while you're on Earth. You two were in a relationship before you left, correct?" _

_"Yes," _ _Elizabeth__ said, not wanting to delve into further details. "What's that for?" she asked, looking at the device Sam was holding out to her. _

_"We've had some problems with people bugging the homes of those with clearance lately," Sam explained. _

_Elizabeth__ took the device and frowned at it. "Bug killer?" she asked, eyebrow arched. _

_"Frequency jammer. Same idea, but this will cover more variables," Sam said. "Just flip the switch to turn it on. It only has forty hours battery life but if you flip it on and off when you talk about anything sensitive you should be fine." _

_"Just flip the switch?" _ _Elizabeth__ confirmed. _

_"Just flip the switch," Sam nodded. _

_Nodding in understanding, _ _Elizabeth__ looked from the device to Sam and back to the device in her hand. "Thank you." _

_Sam shrugged. "Just trying to protect our shared interests," she said honestly. "I may have been at this longer, but what we do is no less your life's work than it is mine." She offered up an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry if I haven't acted like I understand that." _

_They shared a look of understanding and then _ _Elizabeth__ nodded and left the lab, the frequency jammer in hand._

* * *

"What's that?" Simon asked, frowning, a forkful of soy sauce drenched rice halfway between his plate and his mouth.

Elizabeth flipped the switch. "Frequency jammer," she said as she set the device down between them. The Atlantis expedition meant everything to Elizabeth and she was willing to do whatever it took to ensure that the expedition remained as covert as it was. "It's… a long story. This is just… a precautionary measure," Elizabeth said, waving off Simon's questioning stare.

"What exactly have you gotten yourself into this time, Elizabeth?" Simon questioned, more in frustration than disbelief, much to Elizabeth's surprise. Simon had always been incredibly supportive of the lengths she sometimes had to go to for her career.

"It's just… very secret. And I would like to keep it that way," Elizabeth said, feeling more than a little defensive of her beloved expedition. It felt like that was all she had done since she arrived back on Earth—against politicians, against military types, against scientists who didn't think the things her people wanted were rational—and she really didn't want to have to defend the expedition to Simon. She was sure that there were a plethora of other things she would have to defend to Simon, but she refused to allow the expedition be one of those things.

Simon nodded slightly, hearing the momma-bear note in Elizabeth's voice, the one that meant she was ready and willing to fight to the death over what she was talking about. He was angry, and hurt, and guilty, and several other things, but he wasn't insane; going up against Elizabeth when she had her momma-bear voice going was not something he had made the mistake of doing since the first year of their relationship.

"What happened, Elizabeth? One day you say you have a meeting with the President and you'll be home late, then you call from Colorado Springs and say that you need to move there for a little while, possibly permanently. It takes me months to move the two of us here, and by the time we have the house set up you say you're being given a better position, but you can't tell me where, then you take your sub-zero-weather bag and the next time I hear from you is in a video tape after seven Air Force guys—armed ones, I'd like to point out—make me fill out seven hundred pages of non-disclosure agreements before handing it to me and instructing me to destroy the tape once I was finished watching it. And now, ten months later, we're eating a buffet of food from three different cultures—none of which would require the sub-zero bag—like it's a regular evening, which we haven't had since you got that call to meet the President. What's going on?"

Elizabeth pulled a thick book out of her bag and put it down between them. "Before I can say anything else I need you to read and sign this. What you know so far is… just the tip of the iceberg, Simon, and you can't know about it until you sign this non-disclosure package saying that you understand the penalties for uttering even a syllable about what I'm about to tell you to anyone else." She pushed the book toward Simon, dropping a pen on top. "I'm going to turn this thing off while you read—as long as you promise to just read and sign where indicated by the flags and not comment aloud about any of this."

"Okay, I promise," Simon pledged, shovelling a nearly grotesque forkful of food into his mouth before pushing his plate aside and beginning to read the non-disclosure agreement. Elizabeth turned off the jammer, because she knew that once she started telling Simon about the new path her life had taken—from annoying politicians and poly-sci majors to life-sucking aliens and… well the annoying politicians were still there, but, fortunately, also a galaxy away—the conversation would be a long one. Lots of details.

Simon liked details. He was never satisfied with an overview, always needed to know the whole story. He attributed it to being a doctor, needing a patient's full history before doing anything. She attributed it to Simon being an anal-retentive man who knew that information equalled power and who never felt like he had enough power of his own… though that was an opinion she had kept to herself, except for at the one girl's poker night she had attended where the Athosian ale had been flowing more freely than usual and the topic of conversation had drifted to men, as it often did at the bi-weekly gatherings where rank was left at the door.

Elizabeth went back to her meal, though she wasn't as hungry as she had been in the car, while Simon read through the non-disclosure agreement. Sedge approached her, begging for scraps—another bad habit she had learned from Simon, Elizabeth noted. No wonder her dog had gained weight, if she was getting fed from the table. Simon had always been bad about that, though. Dropping food while cooking and whistling for Sedge to come clean it up instead of bending down and cleaning up the mess himself, giving Sedge the bottom inch of milk in his cereal in the morning despite the sugar content in the cereals he ate, chopping leftovers up to mix with Sedge's dry food. Elizabeth shuddered to think how close to stroking out her beloved Sedgewick was after a year living solo with Simon Wallace.

After fifteen minutes Elizabeth gave up on the pretence of eating, getting up and clearing her plate into the garbage—at least that was still where it had been when she left—and then she started putting the containers away in the fridge, most of them not having even been touched. She made a mental note to grab them before heading back to the Mountain later; Jack had managed to get them all VIP quarters, meaning mini-fridges, two per 'suite', and she had missed leftover take-out while on Atlantis. Simon was still reading, but he was nearly finished, and he had started fiddling with a pen, uncapping it and recapping it again with one hand while the other fingered the corner of the page he was reading. The clicking of the pen was driving Elizabeth a little bit crazy, especially after a year of largely non-paper-based paperwork, so she mumbled something about taking Sedge outside and exited with her dog to the backyard where absolutely nothing looked like it had when she left.

Where rose bushes once bloomed—not by her hand, they were remnants of the previous owners, but she had managed to not kill them the entire time she lived in the house, which was something she was proud of—a hideous brick barbeque stood. Where rhododendrons once blossomed a wooden picnic table, the bright green paint chipping away at it—how was that even possible, after so few months away, anyway?—sat on a cement platform. Where her glass and wrought-iron patio table and chairs once resided, overlooking the lower tier of the large garden, a coi pond gurgled… which wasn't a terrible addition, she had to admit, though she wouldn't have put the pond in the middle of the yard like that. The grass was looking kind of scraggly, long in places, brown in others; it was obvious that Simon didn't have the Sawyer kid coming over to mow the lawn every Saturday like Elizabeth had—Jaden Sawyer had made a small fortune doing odd jobs for Elizabeth around the house shortly after she moved in, and he had proved to be particularly adept at taming the two-tiered lawn that surrounded the flower beds.

Sinking down to sit on the cement steps that separated the upper and lower tiers of the lawn, Elizabeth sighed. Sedge came over and sat on the step beside Elizabeth, nudging her owner's hand until she got Elizabeth to scratch behind her ears. "I guess you really can't go home again," Elizabeth said softly.

* * *

_Okay, I know I promised "The Talk" but... well, picking at Simon and the changes in the house and everything... it kinda got away from me. I know, I know, I just really don't like Simon. But I swear, on the head of Joe Flanigan, "The Talk" will be in the next chapter._

_The 'end of lockout' thing was... well, my beta added it. We're both insanely devoted hockey fans (GO CANUCKS GO!) and, since the timeline for when the gang got back to Earth could be skewed to be right around the time the NHL lockout ended... yeah, I know, not a great joke. Kinda fell flat. But I kept it in, because even if it was a lame gag it came from Simon and I never really saw him as the great sense of humour guy. Anyway... GO CANUCKS GO!_

_Read. Respond. Read more. Respond more. It's the circle of life, my friends. You don't wanna know what happens when you mess with the circle of life._

_Manic Penguin_


	16. Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

* * *

While Sedge was usually a fairly good listener, Elizabeth just didn't feel up to going through the events of the past ten months twice in one day, and, while she would much rather talk to Sedge than Simon at that moment, she knew that Simon was the one she owed the explanation to. Sedge… well, Sedge was mostly just happy to see her again; happy in the kind of way that only dogs could truly be, it seemed, the kind of happy that her beloved puppy—who hadn't been a puppy by definition for a few years but would always be the tiny bundle of white baby fluff that she had fallen in love with at the SPCA that she would walk past on her way to get coffee from the little family coffee shop not far from her office in the UN building in New York—seemed to have cornered the market on. Sedge was an eternal comfort to Elizabeth and the single photograph that she had squirreled away in between the pages of one of her books when departing for Atlantis hadn't been an adequate substitute for the physical presence of her canine companion.

A cool breeze filtered through the trees and fences to tickle her bare arms and Elizabeth immediately breathed in deep, hoping for the familiar scent of the Lantian ocean and maybe a hint of the military-grade soap, sandalwood-ish aftershave of Athosian origin, a hint of clean sweat, and soft cotton that always came together to make her knees go a little bit liquid whenever John Sheppard was near enough that she could catch his unique scent on the ocean's breeze. Instead of the gentle salt air and _eau du John_ that she had been hoping for Elizabeth's nose was greeted with the once-familiar smells that came from living in a smaller city—some trees but not many, whatever the next door neighbours were barbequing, fresh cut grass, the hot tar from where the people in the green house five doors down were repaving their driveway—which was very much not what she had been hoping for.

Even if the scent of where she was wasn't right what cut at her the most was the fact that the cement step was cold, the kind of cold that chilled her right to the core, the kind of cold that she now associated with the Genii raid on Atlantis and how freezing she had been from the moment Kolya dragged her and Rodney out to the power station until two days later when they were able to shut down the shield and leave the control room. Atlantis itself, though, never felt cold to the touch. Even when it was still raining but the worst of the storm was over and they were able to shut down the shield again the balcony, the special one outside the Control Room that she and John liked to call their own despite it being as good as public property, hadn't been cold. A little flooded, but nothing a few minutes sweeping water under the railing and off the deck with a broom hadn't fixed. The metal of the railing hadn't been chilled by the rain. It didn't seem that anything could make the metal city cold. Ten thousand years under the ocean hadn't even put a chill in the air. Dust, for sure, but no chill.

Lantia didn't have cold seasons, as far as they could tell. Aside from the insane storms that happened with freakish regularity—one massive storm every twenty years, on the dot, with no explanation in the database, at least not that they could find, for why the storm materialized with such regularity—the planet had a comfortably mild weather pattern. The ocean, while not exactly tropical, wasn't cold, and in the ten months that they had inhabited Atlantis it had only rained a handful of times, not counting the storm, and only once during the day. Atlantis itself regulated the city's average temperature and even though the city was largely structured out of metal it never felt cool to the touch, which was incredibly strange, but completely normal at the same time.

Atlantis was paradoxical like that.

The sun was setting to the west, and Elizabeth wasn't dressed for the chilly spring evening, so, rather reluctantly, she got up to go back inside. The garden, what was left of it, at least, was peaceful. The cold cement step wasn't the balcony outside the Control Room, and Sedge wasn't John, and the garden certainly wasn't the ocean, but it was still peaceful, though the sounds of traffic and life going on around the property was definitely different than what she was used to.

It seemed like it only took a moment to get used to life on Atlantis, yet Elizabeth doubted she could ever possibly adjust to life on Earth again. A cliché about not being able to un-ring a bell flitted through her head, but she shook it away. She had never liked clichés much, anyway.

Simon was sitting right where she had left him, the non-disclosure agreement neatly closed back up, the pen lying on top, the cap carefully snapped back on to avoid any potential ink leakage. Simon had always been annoying obsessive about office supplies.

"You sign?" Elizabeth asked, easing back onto the chair she had vacated earlier. Simon shoved the file over to her and Elizabeth flipped to the back, noting Simon's near-illegible doctor's signature, along with what she was fairly sure was the date. It wasn't that she didn't trust him, it was just that if she started talking about Atlantis and he hadn't signed then he could tell whoever he wanted and she could go to prison for treason. "Good," Elizabeth said, tucking the agreement back into her laptop case before flipping the bug killer back on. "I guess I should start at the beginning, huh?"

"That'd be a good place to start, yeah," Simon said coolly.

And so Elizabeth started.

She told him about her meeting with then-Vice President Kinsey in the limo, and about the files she had read on the Stargate, and about how President Hayes had basically said that she had the position and that he expected her to be in Colorado Springs ASAP and how she had gone because the President had ordered her to and, even if she never exactly worked for the United States—the UN headquarters were in New York, but the UN itself wasn't an American entity, despite what some countries believed—she had immediately understood that President Hayes' order wasn't one that limited her job to protecting the interests of only America; the situation was one of galactic proportions, something she didn't fully understand until she had been at the SGC for over twenty-four hours. She told him about the battle with Anubis and the ensuing negotiations over the Antarctic base. She told him about how she had been selected to run the Antarctic base and how the prospect of being the one to unravel the mystery of the Ancients was too good to pass up. She told him about how, after months in the cold of Antarctica, they had found the Lost City; Atlantis. She told him how, after finding Atlantis, they had been given less than a week to ready themselves to leave, and how most of that week had been spent dealing with personnel and equipment issues.

She told him about how it felt to step through the Stargate to another galaxy. She told him about how the lights came on by themselves and how the City was under the ocean until the failsafe kicked in. She told him about the people they'd met and she glossed over the enemies they'd made.

She explained about the siege and how terrifying it had been. She confessed how frustrating it had been when the SGC finally sent reinforcements through and how she had basically been stuffed into a corner until Everett was unable to be in charge any longer. She told him how it broke her heart how many people they had lost, and how Lieutenant Ford's disappearance had hit her hard, and how Peter Grodin's death had hit her even harder.

She told him how she and Carson and Rodney and John had returned to Earth. She told him how intensive the debriefing process had been, and how she had been immediately pulled to Washington to go through the same process all over again. She told him how she couldn't wait to get back to Atlantis.

And, finally, she told him how she hoped he would come back with her.

When she finished, Elizabeth realized that she had been talking for over three hours and she knew it was a hell of a lot to take in all at once—she had lived through it and she still found it all difficult to handle sometimes—so she stayed still and waited for Simon to speak. The man had an opinion on everything, after all; give enough time and he could formulate a response to the story of her life for the past year or so, as fantastic as it all sounded when she summarized it to one fairly intense speech.

He would have questions, she knew. Good, carefully thought out questions, because he was methodical like that. She would answer his questions as best she could, as honestly as she could, because, even though she was allowed to tell him a lot of the details of the Atlantis expedition and the SGC and everything, his clearance was still fairly limited in scope compared to hers. Even if he did come to Atlantis with her he would still have a lower clearance level than she did. Though General O'Neill and the IOA were in the loop on everything now, while the expedition had been cut off from Earth there had been a lot of things that only Elizabeth, Rodney, Carson, and John knew, and even more things that only Elizabeth and John knew. The day after the party celebrating the alliance between the Athosians and the Tau'ri inhabitants of Atlantis Elizabeth had gone over everything that John didn't have the clearance to know when he was just a member of the military, even though, because of rank, he was Sumner's second in command by default—something that Elizabeth recalled pissing Sumner off from the moment she told him she'd brought John in. If Simon came to Atlantis he would only have the clearance level of one of the doctors, like Doctor Biro, on Carson's staff, which, while it did give him an upper hand in that he had access to everyone's medical files, he still wouldn't have carte blanche and she had to make sure that Simon understood that. It wouldn't be an easy pill for him to swallow, Elizabeth knew, but on the matter of global security—on two globes in two different galaxies no less—she couldn't afford to cater to the fragile egos of those who didn't have the clearance or the need to know that which they weren't privy to.

Even though Elizabeth expected that Simon would need some time to absorb what she had just dumped on him she was growing increasingly tired from her hectic schedule that had been running her steadily ragged since arriving back on Earth and she still hadn't caught up on the sleep she had forgone during the weeks leading up to the siege on Atlantis. She knew that she had a full schedule of back-to-back meetings ahead of her and she still had to make a trip back up to the SGC so she could crash in her quarters there, and Simon's usually endearing careful consideration was more irritating than anything.

"Simon?" Elizabeth prodded gently, wanting to at least get an initial reaction before she left.

"I had a patient, about four years ago, I think," Simon said after a minute. "He was convinced that the military was employing aliens for use in a battle against other races. I sent him to the psyc ward."

Reaching over and putting her hand on his forearm, Elizabeth tried to sound as reassuring as she could. "Nearly half the people on this planet believe that the US military is doing something with aliens. That doesn't make the mentally ill any less so. Neither does the fact that one person's delusions happen to have some vague basis in a truth that is not exactly widely known."

Simon nodded, knowing that Elizabeth was right. He pulled his arm away from her and rubbed his hands over his face. "Everything you've just told me is… it's a lot to take in. I think I need some time… to process all this," he said, waving one hand around vaguely as if to demonstrate all that he had to deal with.

Nodding, Elizabeth turned off the bug killer and replaced it in her bag as she hooked the long leather strap over her shoulder. "I should get going anyway. I've got meetings all day tomorrow, but maybe we could have dinner? Talk some more?" she suggested.

"Uh… tomorrow's no good for me. Overnight shift at the hospital," Simon said, the lie coming easily to him. He knew he couldn't very well cancel on Ava with no notice and no excuse—telling her that he was cancelling their plans to have dinner with the woman he'd never technically broken up with was less of an option than telling Elizabeth that there was an Ava—and he had used the 'overnight shift' excuse with Elizabeth before with one hundred percent success so he wasn't worried about her finding anything odd in his statement. The fact that he no longer even worked at a hospital wasn't necessary to mention, either. "The day after tomorrow?" he countered.

"Sounds good. I'll call sometime during the afternoon to set up a time," Elizabeth said as she gathered up her coat and stuffed her feet back into her shoes, not bothering to tie the laces. As much as she had been looking forward to seeing Simon again the fact of the matter was that being in her house when nothing in the house was hers anymore except for Sedge and Simon was cool and aloof and she didn't know how to act around him anymore was thoroughly uncomfortable and she wanted more than anything to escape as fast as possible. Giving Sedge a lingering scratch behind her ears and wishing she could bring the dog with her back to the SGC—if her outfit had caused raised eyebrows earlier she could just imagine what the reaction would be if she walked in with Sedge beside her—Elizabeth said a quick goodbye to Simon before slipping out through the front door and making a beeline for the SGC car.

It wasn't until she was halfway back to the SGC that she started to relax again.

Even if Simon hadn't given her any indication of how he felt about what she was doing or whether or not he intended to seek a position on Atlantis, the simple fact that she had gotten everything out in the open was more liberating than Elizabeth had expected it to be. On Atlantis she rarely had to worry about what was classified and what wasn't, rarely had to watch what she said lest she betray one of the billion state and global secrets she knew. On earth, however, there were limited places where she could actually let her guard down and talk about her experiences, and even then she never relaxed completely, knowing that some things needed to be played down or given the right amount of spin so that events were seen the way she needed them to be seen.

As she was leaving Colorado Springs proper she realized that she hadn't told Simon not to mention her return to her mother, should he speak to her before they saw each other again.

Telling Simon as much of the whole truth as possible was one thing.

Seeing her mother and telling her a complete lie was something else entirely.

"Crap," she said aloud, knowing there was little, if anything, she could do to avoid incurring the wrath of Mama Weir. Being the one to share the news of her return—from where Elizabeth still hadn't worked out—with her mother was one of the only things that she could think of that would help lessen the impact of the fact that she had been completely incommunicado since the day before her meeting with President Hayes.

Pressing her foot down on the accelerator Elizabeth pushed past the speed limit, not particularly caring whether or not she got a ticket. The only way she would stop torturing herself with thoughts of what Simon was going to do or what her mother would say when she finally found the courage to contact her or any number of other things that were spinning around in her mind on a never ending roller coaster loop would be to take the sleeping pills Carson had prescribed to her, crawl into her SGC-issue 'VIP' room bed, and sleep for as many hours as possible before her first meeting the next morning.

* * *

_I re-wrote this chapter so many times I almost lost my mind, and it's still not what I wanted it to be, but for the sake of my sanity I stopped going over it again and again and just posted it._

_Apologies to anyone named Ava. I have nothing against the name, but I was watching **Grey's Anatomy** while I wrote that part and Alex's obsession/patient kinda bugs me so I used one of her many names--Rebeckah, Ava, Jane Doe... I think that's all of them...--forthe someone that Simon 'met'._

_Read. Love. Review._

_Manic Penguin_


	17. Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

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* * *

Since landing at Nellis and being assigned quarters John had felt many things. Most of them were frustration-related—he'd never been good at sitting around doing nothing, which was basically what he'd done since arrival—but there was one feeling he wasn't entirely used to, and it took him a little while to figure out what it was. He finally did, though.

He was lonely.

All his life he'd been surrounded by people—his sisters, his mom before she died, his dad before he put as much distance between himself and the older man as possible, Samantha and her family and their friends from the Academy, friends he'd made at school or specific duty stations—but other than Samantha he'd never really had any people in his life who were constant, whether by presence or thought, because he had thought about Samantha all the time (wondering where she was, if she was still with the Air Force, if she had a giant brood of kids, if she had discovered some amazing science thing that he would probably have no hope of ever understanding) during the years where they hadn't seen each other and had lost touch. Sure, there were usually hundreds of people on any base he was stationed on—he hadn't had an off-base home since the summers between years at the Academy, when he'd lived with Sam and they'd done the college thing—and even when he was in Afghanistan he'd been stationed on a pretty huge base before being sent out on a series of missions. Even McMurdo had been bustling with people, especially after what they were told was a live-action simulation gone wrong—what he now knew was the battle over Antarctica, the battle with Anubis and the Goa'uld and the **Prometheus** and the X-302's and SG-1 down in what became the research outpost. Not long after the battle some big negotiation started happening at McMurdo, which he now knew was the various nations involved in the Stargate program—most only by knowledge of—fighting it out over the rights to the research base where, at the time, General O'Neill had been in stasis.

Then he came to Atlantis.

Immediately he'd found a family in his team. Teyla was the calming mother figure… who could, and had on pretty much every occasion, kick his ass all the way back to the Milky way. Rodney was the quirky adopted brother type, not really belonging (in the field) but there anyway, because John wanted him there, and Elizabeth had given him that enigmatic smile of hers and said something about how she was going to order that John and Rodney be on the same team anyway so it was good he'd put McKay's name on the list of people he wanted on his team. And Ford… Ford was the hyperactive puppy, so eager to get right in the middle of the mess, sometimes creating them on his own, sometimes getting blamed for them, sometimes just walking right into a situation that, despite his enthusiasm, he was too green to fully appreciate; Ford was a green puppy with a scary amount of knowledge on explosives—he liked to blow things up, John had never seen him happier than the day he'd ordered Ford to blow the stump on the Genii homeworld with some of the extra C-4 he knew the young Lieutenant carried with him in his vest. And, of course, Elizabeth was the boss, not really a part of the official team, but she had quickly become a part of the team anyway, though her roll was more passive, her job consisting of sitting at home worrying about her people, then writing about it, then reading about it, then hearing about it, then repeating ad nausium. Then there were the others. Carson, who was, John refused to admit aloud, like his grandmother, all concern and anticdotes and strange sayings that meant nothing to John but evidently had meaning somewhere in the mish-mash of words, despite the fact that they often left John feeling like he had been thrust into a Boggle bowl, or a particularly sadistic book of Mad Libs. Radek, who was like the eccentric cousin no one really understood, who was amusing in a harmless sort of way, and often underestimated, falling into the shadow of the rest of the family—mostly Rodney, in Radek's case—and, while not quite happy with his lot in the clan, never unhappy enough to try to do anything about it. And, like any family, there were the more distant relatives, people like Miko Kusanagi, and Kate Heightmeyer, and poor Peter Grodin, and Bates and the rest of the military contingent, and the scientists, and the people who didn't fall into either category, the ones who had come as floaters, who worked in the kitchens or the laundry or did odd jobs that never would have gotten done if left up to either the military or scientific contingents of the expedition. John knew all their names, knew all their faces, and if he couldn't link the name and the face together he figured that was okay, because, really, he didn't know the names of his nieces and nephews—he'd heard that Patty had been pregnant when he left for Atlantis, and he knew Angela had two kids, though he had been so far removed from the lives of his two older sisters by the time his divorce had been finalized, two years before his transfer to McMurdo following his almost-Court-Marshal, that he didn't know if there were more than the three he knew of, or if three was it, or if Patty had lost the baby, as she had the two before it, the first to a horrible car accident that nearly cost the lives of three, Patty and her husband, Ben, as well as their unborn son, the second to a traumatic stillbirth, a girl that time, at three days shy of her due date, both before John had graduated from the Academy.

John had been the surprise baby, years after his sisters were born, entering their teens, and his mother had fallen into a pattern of depression and alcohol and suppressed anger, while his father had fallen to a pattern of alcohol and expressed rage, leaving baby John to be, largely, raised by his sisters, his sisters who, he knew, loved him dearly, but didn't understand why he lived his life the way he did. Why he didn't trust that God was looking out for him, even though he found it hard to believe in a God who would allow so much suffering and pain and war and death fill one rather small world. Why he chose to join the Air Force instead of using his brain and aptitude for math and sciences (biology and physics were his strong suits, but he had never loved them, had never loved math, until he realized that, physics and math would get him into the cockpit of a fighter jet, or a helicopter, where he could make a difference in the world so full of hate and pain and death, even the tiniest difference, because the world was too screwed up for him not to at least try) to do something worthy, like become a doctor or an accountant, something with a big pay cheque and low danger and, still help people, help the world a little bit, if that was what he wanted out of his career. Patty and Angela never understood him, John knew, and that was okay, at least while he was married to Nancy, because they had adored Nancy, especially when she was trying to convince him to leave the Air Force, and if he was married to a woman like Nancy, a nice, normal girl who worked in a bank and loved spending time with her sisters in law, then there was still hope for their brother. But then he'd gone to Afghanistan, and done more good, he believed, than he really had before, and he'd tried to not leave his people behind, and he had managed to bring the body home, which was more than would have been done if he hadn't defied orders, and when he was transferred back Stateside for the Article 32 hearing, a precursor to a General Court Marshal. His Article 32 hearing had come though saying that, yes, he had disobeyed orders, but that, considering the fact that John found Captain Holland alive but that he hadn't survived the trip home. He's survived until they got a helo—an old Russian piece of crap that took John a minute to figure out, as everything was labelled in faded and scratched Cyrillic, which he had no clue how to read, though he figured out how to get the tub in the air and to the base, though it was slow going, the engine almost died three times on him, and all his attention was focused on getting back to the base, which led to Holland bleeding out in the back on the helo mere miles from the base. The Judge his Article 32 had been heard by, and the JAG prosecutor had both agreed that, yes, he had defied orders, but that, if his original suggestion of a covert rescue had been heeded Holland would have come home alive. So he'd been given a black mark on his record, his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, which had been in the works at the time, was off the table, and he was shunted to McMurdo, which, eventually, led him to that research outpost and to Elizabeth Weir and her request to come to the lost city of Atlantis with her.

Everyone on Atlantis was his family. He didn't know everything about the, nor them of him, but they were still his family.

John felt incredibly lonely without his rather makeshift and clearly dysfunctional family around all the time.

Even when they came back to Earth he'd still had his family around. Most of the people who mattered most to him had been just down the hall, cement instead of glass and metal and decorative stone, with key cards that were necessary to open doors instead of simple thought or, at most, a crystal to wave a hand over.

Rodney had been around, though grumpier than usual, the SGC not being up to par any longer as far as Ancient research went, and the fact that he wasn't in charge made it harder for him to order the other scientists around. Or, rather, made it harder for him to get the other scientists to do what he ordered them to do. Because they had their own work, and he was the outsider who had no place in their labs, and some of them knew him from before, before Atlantis, before a year in the midst of a war, before the things Rodney had seen and done and the experience he'd gained and the awareness of what being on a team meant; back when he'd been the ass called in a couple of times to try to save the world or whatever, who had been antagonistic and willing to abandon the lives of pivotal and loved members of the SGC in favour of expediency, who had offered unimaginative solutions to problems that couldn't be stuffed into a multiple choice question, who had been cocky and loud and annoying as hell. And, sure, John was the first to point out that Rodney was still cocky and loud and, oftentimes, annoying as hell, but Rodney was still his brother, and a reminder of the fact that, even if the SGC wasn't Atlantis, there was still a home, a family, waiting for him back in Pegasus.

Carson had been there for a few days, during the debriefing period, but he'd left the same time Elizabeth had, Elizabeth to a military transport to Washington, Carson to a civilian airport that would take him to Scotland and his family. The Scot called often, though, and John got the impression that the saying 'you can't go home again' was ringing true in the good doctor because John recognized the homesickness in Carson's voice, homesickness that had nothing to do with his mother's clapboard house or questionable food he was eating or the sheep he claimed to spend his days tending to. That homesickness had nothing to do with Scotland, but everything to do with Atlantis, with the family Carson had found there, the family that was the kind formed by time and deed and experience and loss and isolation. The people who had survived on Atlantis so far were their family.

Elizabeth had been there, almost always by his side, during the initial debriefs, but then she left for Washington and he started going on missions with Samantha and her team. He and Elizabeth spoke on the phone often, about work or about inconsequential things that they would have chatted about in her office, or the Mess, or their balcony, if they were back home.

He'd already talked to Carson since he woke up that morning. Apparently the time difference didn't mean anything to the good doctor, but John hadn't minded, because he was lonely, missing his Atlantis family, thinking a little too much about his birth family, allowing his thoughts to stray into areas that he never allowed them to—dangerous areas, like how his day didn't feel complete without seeing Elizabeth smile at least once or how it felt weird to go to sleep without their usual nightly cup of tea (they had both, as leaders of the City, given up coffee well before even the first stage of rationing began, both switching to teas, which were plentiful, both from Earth and from the Athosians and their many trading partners) or how he knew Elizabeth was going to be under a hundred times more pressure now that they were in contact with Earth because, while she had never been careless, she had never had to worry about the politics back home before when she made a command decision, and he was pretty sure that the IOA, at the very least, was going to put a quick stop to that, politics being, as far as John understood it, the reason for it's existence.

So John had welcomed the early wake-up call from Scotland, had drawn the conversation out for as long as he could, laughing at the doc's stories of his family, of the drunken debauchery—which was hard to imagine the doc engaging in, though John supposed it was possible, having never seen him outside of a work environment where everyone was pretty much on duty twenty-four-seven—he'd gotten into with his old friends since meeting up with them again, about the girls—lasses, the Carson inside John's head corrected—he'd met for the first time, or had become reacquainted with since landing in Scotland, and, of course, about the sheep, even, because apparently Carson's mother had a lot of sheep, or at least what John thought was a lot of sheep, and, well, as hard as he tried, John kept flashing to a disturbing image of Carson Beckett, MD, wearing a white hoop skirt with blonde ringlets sticking out from under a flowery bonnet, carrying a tall crook with a pink bow tied to it, like something ripped from a nursery rhyme and twisted in ways that John was sure were cause for a psych eval.

After hanging up with Carson John had called Rodney's lab, the one that had been empty since a scientist had left the SGC to work at Area 51 or something, and had been given to Rodney to use while he was on Earth. There had been no answer, so John had left a message on the voicemail, hoping Rodney thought to check the thing even as he was leaving the message. Rodney hadn't returned John's call, though, to be fair, he didn't expect the astrophysicist to, knowing the strangeness of hours Rodney was known to keep when he was working in the labs. He could wake up at dawn and work until dusk, sure, but other times he would wake at midnight, work until dusk the following day, then crash until the next morning, and, occasionally—though only when the situation warranted it—he would work around the clock, falling asleep while waiting for a simulation to run or some test results to come back, jerking awake mere minutes later, eating everything he could and drinking so much coffee that the amount of time he spent getting the coffee and rushing to the bathroom to piss it back out probably added up to at least a few hours of sleep in a bed, though John knew better than to point that out.

John thought about calling Elizabeth, but he didn't know what to say to her; being in separate states for so long had left them with annoyingly little to talk about beyond smalltalk and work, which was best not spoken about over the phone, and, while he wouldn't mind having one of the meaningless conversations about philosophy or who was hooking up with whom in which department—they always knew, or, at least, Elizabeth seemed to always know when a couple formed on Atlantis, and, for the most part, they didn't care, except for once when the couple was on the same off-world team; they'd had to do some switching of teams then, but it hadn't been anything major and no one had argued over the team-swapping. Elizabeth was, John had realized early on, very casual about dating under her command; they didn't know how long they were going to be isolated from Earth, and it was foolhardy, she'd declared, to expect a thousand people to live their lives without sex or companionship or love. John actually longed to have one of their long talks about nothing and everything, usually over a cup of tea or a meal or a game of chess, where they both let the pressure of being in command fall away, at least for a little while. But there were only so many calls to each other they could make where they did that before some pencil-pusher or overly nosy pain in the ass looked at their cell records and asked a question to someone higher up about the true extent of the relationship between the two leaders of Atlantis.

John wasn't a stupid man, nor was he an uninformed one. He'd heard all the rumours. He knew Elizabeth had to. And, sure, some of the cruder ones pissed him off, and he really hated it when people gossiped about Elizabeth or Teyla like they were whatever celebrity teen caught drinking or doing drugs or whatever, but, for the most part, the rumours were just a way for people to blow off steam, they all knew that, and he mostly ignored the gossipmongers. It was usually some distortion of the truth, the rumours that spread like freaking wildfire, but the distortion, while usually the fun part of gossip, was also the hurtful part, the part that left Teyla pouting and confused—the Athosian didn't quite grasp the concept of gossip, her people being very open and honest about everything from health to sex to war to everything in between—and Elizabeth alternately fuming and laughing hysterically—depending on her mood, and who she heard the gossip from; if it was told right to her she usually laughed, if she overheard someone else talking about it she would usually fume, then find an isolated balcony (not theirs, theirs was too close to people, to her subordinates, and she was judged enough by them as it was) and let loose on the world, the universe, the people who talked about her like she was some drug addicted pop star, the Wraith (because her nice quiet scientific expedition had become the front line in a war that had been waging for tens of thousands of years and she wasn't a General, she wasn't meant to sent troops into battle; she was there to keep peace between the scientists and the military types sent to protect them, not to help turn the scientists into military types) and everything else, sometimes going back to her father's death, sometimes just yelling about the most current hell she was going through, oftentimes switching languages with as much rapidity as she switched topics, Spanish, Japanese, Czech, two different regional Arabic dialects, fucking Goa'uld, Ancient, broken Italian, poorly accented French, swearing like a longshoreman the whole time.

Samantha, John knew, was going to spend most of her remaining time at the SGC in meetings with various SGC scientists, passing along her research, moving projects around to other labs, other departments, because, really, there wasn't much that Sam didn't take on, even though her degrees weren't as all-encompassing as she might lead people to believe. Normally John wouldn't care, would call her up, but it had been so long since they had been in the same place at the same time, and their lives were so insanely different than when they were flying missions in the Middle East, that he didn't dare interrupt Sam while she was working. She'd been calling him pretty regularly, having promised to keep an eye on Elizabeth and Rodney for him, and to keep him as in the loop as possible on the more crucial details involved in the preparing to return to Pegasus with a whole new compliment of people.

He hated being away from the thick of things, even if the thick of things was, at the moment, as dull as bartering for funding and personnel and equipment, which, it seemed, had been all Sam had been able to report for the past few days. He felt like he should be there, be by Elizabeth's side, while she did everything in her not inconsiderable powers to get Atlantis everything it could possible get in order to ensure that she didn't have to fill that morbid death log of hers, that they wouldn't have to make any more apology and condolence tapes; that they wouldn't have to make any more floods of apology and condolence tapes like they had between the siege and leaving for Earth, after the first round of tapes had already been sent and the death count had been ratcheted up, not only by their own personnel, but by Colonel Everett's people as well.

Still, he'd been in the Air Force for most of his life, and he'd been ordered to stay at Nellis until he'd completed his quals on the X-302.

So stay he would.

That didn't mean he had to like it.

* * *

.

* * *

Elizabeth hadn't even closed the door to her quarters when she was pulled into a meeting with General Landry, Colonel Caldwell, and several others. The good thing about the meeting was that, if Caldwell was there, then that meant that they would be able to start back to Atlantis within a few days.

However, that was the _only_ good thing about the meeting.

To be quite honest she was feeling like she was being drawn into an ambush, and after spending most of her time back on Earth in DC she was not feeling completely ready to deal with more people with agendas of their own. One thing about the egos on Atlantis was that they were relatively balanced out by all the other egos running around, unless you encountered McKay and his galaxy-sized ego, but in DC all the egos were clashing for dominance and she had a feeling that the egos at the SGC were going to be just as bad.

"I understand the International Committee has approved a significant increase in personnel and resources for the Atlantis mission," General Landry said.

"Now that we have a ZPM, the city can support a much larger contingent," Elizabeth nodded. It had been a hellish time in DC, and Elizabeth had been tempted to scream in the middle of many a meeting, but in the end she and General O'Neill, who had been right there with her for every meeting and had been about two steps ahead of her in the wanting to scream feeling, had emerged victorious. And neither one had lost their composure in any of the meetings, which Elizabeth and Jack had agreed was as much a victory as anything else.

"Of course a corresponding increase in military presence would also be prudent," Caldwell said. Just the sound of his voice made Elizabeth's lingering happiness that she had felt as she and Jack had left the last of the meetings they had had to attend completely disappear.

Nonetheless, Elizabeth nodded, agreeing with the nearly bald man. Increased military presence _was_ priority one, really. As much as she wanted the expedition to be completely scientific and peaceful, the truth was that they had enemies, enemies that were not going to be just science-ed away, and the thought of attempting diplomacy was, quite frankly, laughable. She hated that violence seemed to be the only answer, but even Elizabeth Weir wasn't nearly naive enough to believe that they could just talk the Wraith out of feeding off of the human population of the Pegasus Galaxy at will. "I agree. That's why I wanted Major Sheppard to come back with me. In fact, I brought _all_ my senior staff back. I think it's only fair that they participate in the selection process of the new personnel in their respective departments," Elizabeth said pointedly. What went unsaid was that any meeting concerning the military contingent should be put on hold until John returned from Nevada so that he could have a say in what was happening in his department.

"That's kind of what we wanted to talk to you about. In your report, you singled Major Sheppard out for a lot of credit," Landry said.

Alarm bells were going on inside Elizabeth's head, but she ignored them, deciding that she was just on edge after the week of meetings with people with multiple agendas that didn't all mesh and that she was allowing her concern over the whole Simon situation to cloud her judgement. Jack had selected Landry to take over the SGC, after all, and Elizabeth knew that Jack was one hundred percent, totally and completely on her side about all matters concerning how she ran the expedition. Elizabeth firmly believed that Jack wouldn't hire someone to run the SGC who would pull the rug out from under her at the first opportunity. "That's right," Elizabeth nodded.

Landry began gesturing with his coffee cup. "You were also candid enough to document several occasions on which you and the Major didn't exactly see eye to eye. In particular, there was an incident involving an alien nanovirus in which Major Sheppard directly disobeyed one of your orders."

Biting back a line about healthy argument from different sides leading to a more educated solution for all involved (mostly because what she and John had done during the nanovirus debacle wasn't healthy argument so much as him getting frustrated and going against her ruling) Elizabeth fixed her gaze on General Landry. "He also saved a lot of lives that day," Elizabeth said, the alarms getting louder and more difficult to ignore.

"The Major's courage and ingenuity are not in question here. His ability to follow the proper chain of command _is_," Landry said.

"I'm not military, General," Elizabeth pointed out.

"But you are the leader of the expedition," Caldwell shot back.

Landry knew that Caldwell was only going to make Elizabeth even more defensive, something he wanted to avoid at all costs, so he stepped in, his tone gentle and his logic sound. "You see, Doctor, from our point of view, Major Sheppard's independent nature poses a bit of a problem. If he could disobey _you_, he may see fit to do the same to the new commander of the military contingent on Atlantis," Landry said.

Though Jack had warned her it might happen and John had flat-out said he expected it to happen, Elizabeth honestly hadn't believed that anyone would try to replace John as the military commander of Atlantis. She had been sure that someone with a higher rank would be his second in command of the whole military—Lieutenant Ford had been a bit of a stretch, but they hadn't had as many commissioned military officers as enlisted—and that John would pick someone new to head base security since Bates still hadn't woken up and, last Elizabeth heard, Doctor Lam was thinking of calling the Tok'ra to get someone able to utilize the Goa'uld healing device to try to wake Bates from his coma. Those changes she had been expecting—Bates might never serve again, and Ford was MIA, not to mention compromised because of the enzyme, and they were running on what John called 'military lite' after the casualty count from the siege was finalized and the transfer requests were accepted. But when Jack and John had both told her that John was likely to be replaced she had shaken her head, refusing to believe that it would happen.

Apparently, though, it was happening right before her eyes.

"Excuse me? When did this happen?" Elizabeth asked, stunned.

"Of course, the decision hasn't been made yet—but we do have a candidate in mind," Landry said, glancing at Caldwell who tilted his head at Elizabeth, a cocky expression on his face.

Elizabeth internally cringed at the thought of working with Caldwell day in, day out. She and John had an uncanny ability to read each other, an ability that made their co-leadership of Atlantis as effortless as leading a massive expedition in a city no one understood in the middle of a war that had been waging for upwards of ten thousand years could be. The few encounters she had had with Caldwell, and, to be fair, Elizabeth had to admit that they were very few in number, had not been the most pleasant, nor the most productive. Even Colonel Sumner had been willing to accept her word as the final decision, at least during the brief time that he had been her second in command. She doubted Steven Caldwell would react the same way, especially not after having solo command of the **Daedalus** where his orders were followed without question and he didn't have to answer to anyone until he turned his reports in to the US Air Force.

Beginning to feel that she was being railroaded, Elizabeth straightened her spine and allowed her gaze to turn icy. The change was subtle, and had John been in the room he would have gotten the 'danger Will Robinson' look in his eyes that allowed everyone in sight to know what kind of mood they could expect to be dealing with from the boss. Unfortunately, without John in the room to convey in more obvious terms what her spine-straightening-icy-gaze one-two punch meant, the intimidation factor was minimal, if it, in fact, existed at all. "Atlantis _has _a military commander," she said firmly. She was beginning to believe that John had been sent to Nevada and that the people there had been asked to make his training as drawn out as possible to keep him away from the meeting that Elizabeth wished she could just walk out of.

"You _had_ a military commander—Colonel Sumner," Landry said. Then, to make sure he wasn't casting any aspersions on how things on Atlantis progressed, rank-wise, from there, he added, "When he was killed, Major Sheppard _correctly_ assumed the position until a proper replacement could be brought in."

The unspoken 'which is what is happening right now' hung in the air and Elizabeth felt that all-too-familiar need to scream coming upon her again.

"Doctor, you can't be suggesting that a mission of this importance be trusted to a Major, and one with a questionable record at that," Caldwell said, softly chuckling at the thought.

Elizabeth wasn't sure if it was the Colonel's supercilious tone, or just the fact that the Colonel had said what he had, or possibly a combination of the two, but no matter the reason, her patience was completely gone.

"Major Sheppard's record before he joined my team doesn't concern me. All I can tell you is that if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be sitting here right now. And as for his rank, if that's not good enough for you, you're just gonna have to promote him," Elizabeth said, her voice strong and unwavering.

General Landry looked like he wanted to laugh, though, wisely, he didn't give in the impulse. "Doctor…"

Elizabeth stood up, interrupting the General. "I shouldn't have to remind you gentlemen that I continue to have the support of the President and our foreign allies," Elizabeth said. She smiled sweetly at the General. "You don't wanna fight me on this one," she said before turning and leaving the room.

Once she was far enough away from the conference room Elizabeth pulled out her cell phone and dialled a familiar number, making sure to use the direct line that, as far as she knew, only a handful of people knew.

Two rings later Elizabeth was greeted with the voice of the person she needed to talk to most in that moment. _"O'Neill."_

"Jack, its Elizabeth. I need a favour and I need it to happen instantaneously."

There was a brief pause and Elizabeth began to grow concerned that Jack was going to laugh at her and hang up.

But he didn't.

_"What can I do?"_ Jack asked.

* * *

.

* * *

Okay, so I've been writing this story for nearly two years now, I've been posting it for over one, and still I haven't gotten to the point where John and Elizabeth get together. Which, yes, sucks, especially since that was, literally, the first part that I wrote and then this whole thing sprouted out of that. There are still a few chapters (four or five, I think, but I can't be sure quite yet) before that happens and the rating on this story actually starts to make sense.

So, yeah, this chapter is much longer than originally intended. Mostly because, in it's first incarnation, it didn't include the whole lonely-John thing in the beginning. In fact, this is only half (actually, more like two thirds) of what I wanted Chapter 17 to be.

_**Carson, who was, John refused to admit aloud, like his grandmother, all concern and anticdotes and strange sayings that meant nothing to John but evidently had meaning somewhere in the mish-mash of words, despite the fact that they often left John feeling like he had been thrust into a Boggle bowl, or a particularly sadistic book of Mad Libs.**_ This passage came from my beta, who kept telling me that she thought Carson was just like her grandmother (which coincided with my watching an episode with the audio commentary where someone, I can't remember who now, said that Carson was like an old woman). Also, it's been pointed out to me that, on occasion, I talk like I've been thrown into a Boggle bowl or a sadistic book of Mad Libs, and, well, my beta, Mel, threatened to withhold my promised birthday present of Atlantis Season 4 DVD's if I didn't include this passage and point it out to my readers. So, Mel, I've done what you ask. July 8th I expect those DVD's. The only reason you're getting off with the six day delay on my actual birthday is that the DVD's don't hit stores unitl the 8th.

So the first part of this chapter is a bit of sulking, isolated John. I've been working on a LAST MAN alternate outcome that's had me inside John's head a lot, and that style of writing kind of carried over to my later drafts of this chapter. Also, the first part explains a bit about why Rodney and Carson haven't actually appeared since the earliest chapters. I haven't forgotten about them... they're just not exactly crucial to the storyline I've built here. Still, they're John's friends, his family, and , since I felt compelled to embrace the lonely John thing, well... this is what I ended up with.

The second part is, finally, something that was actually shown in the episode, and the dialogue that you recognize, obviously, doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the brilliant writers and actors and owners and producers and everyone else associated with Atlantis, which, judging by my bank balance and the lack of John and Elizabeth storylines, does not include me. The other stuff... well, that's mine, as much as it can be. Anyway, I know, it's been a while since I did any of that, and this was supposed to be an episode extension so the fact that I hadn't had any actual episode in it for so long was getting to be a little crazy. But I had to bring Caldwell back in, and Landry, and the meeting where Elizabeth defends John's honour or whatever. But, since it never made sense to me that everyone just did what Elizabeth told them to, I brought Jack in, because together they probably have enough pull to get anything done; at the time of INTRUDER the IOA wasn't as focused on getting rid of Elizabeth, but I doubt they would have handed over the reigns to the O-5 board (O being Officers, 5 being the fifth level of promotion within commissioned ranks, the O-5 board being the panel of senior officers who approve or deny promotions to that specific level).


	18. Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

* * *

Just as John was resigning himself to yet another day without any of the training he had been sent to receive there was a knock on the door to his quarters.

He had been mentally calculating the likelihood that a brief escape to Las Vegas proper, and, more specifically, the Strip, would be possible, since he wouldn't mind getting a bit of money of his own in savings in the States—most of his own money, the income he got from the Air Force, was either invested in long-term investments or used to pay for the hanger his plane, leaving him very cash-poor while on Earth—and he had yet to encounter a casino that could catch his innate card-counting abilities so the four hundred he had reluctantly borrowed from Sam before leaving Colorado Springs could easily turn into a couple of thousand in an hour or so if he played it right.

If the person at the door didn't have good news on the training-front, John decided, he was going to see about getting out of Nellis and Area 51 for a few hours—it wasn't like it was unheard of for officers and enlisted personnel stationed at Nellis to hit the casinos when they were off-duty, and, after a few days of basically staying in the same BOQ room, John was positive that he couldn't get much more 'off-duty'. He made a mental note to avoid Caesar's, though, because he remembered Sam mentioning someone they had served with during the Gulf War, who knew him pretty well, well enough to know about his card-counting skills (having lost more to John than he could really recall before John was basically banned from all of the regular games where ever he was based) was heading up security there lately. Surveillance and security was a private sector job that a lot of ex-service men and women got into after leaving the armed forces.

Rolling off of the bed John opened the door. A female officer in a flightsuit stood on the step that led up to his temporary quarters. Quickly reading her name and rank off of the leather nameplate on her flightsuit and taking in the patch indicating that she was a member of an X-302 squadron, John felt a tiny flash of hope that, not only would he finally get the training he had been ordered to get, but that he might also, finally, be able to get the hell out of Nevada.

He hated Nevada.

"What can I do for you, Captain Conway?" John inquired.

"Not destroy my ride, sir," the Airwoman replied. John smirked in response, liking the Captain's attitude instantly. "Hangar Bay 3 in half an hour work for you, sir?"

Though he could easily get ready and make it to Hangar Bay 3 in half that time, John simply nodded. Dismissing the Captain who took off at a light jog back toward the hanger bays, John went back into the depths of his quarters, hopping on one foot while struggling to untie the laces on the other boot while moving toward his flightsuit that had been sitting on the top of the dresser since he arrived.

Twenty five minutes later John entered Hanger Bay 3, easily spotting Conway running through the external pre-flight on one of the X-302's about halfway toward the back of the building. He walked over to join her, noting that, while Conway ran her external pre-flight check on the 302, a thoroughly disgruntled man in a pristine lab coat watched her every move. When he got close enough John heard the lab coat guy complain loudly that he had already done everything that Conway was doing and she should really start trusting the people that built the damn thing to know if it was in any way damaged before sending it out. The scene was familiar enough—Rodney or Zelenka in the roll of the lab coat guy, John in Conway's position—that John had to bite his lip to keep from laughing aloud at how universal—literally, apparently—the scientist-versus-military squabbles could be.

"I don't get why you're so protective of this particular one, anyway. How can you even tell them apart?" the scientist groused to Conway.

"This baby got me through Anubis and Antarctica, Morris, and I was on the team that developed the 302's for a year before you were even read in on the project so don't get all bitchy about me going over your cursory glances," Conway said while running her fingertips over the nose of the ship. She noticed John and her spine straightened a little. "Major Sheppard, this is Doctor Morris. He's under the mistaken impression that because he didn't see a gaping hole in the side of my ride he knows how to run a pre-flight."

John smiled at that. He liked Conway, and not just because she was going to get him off Terra Firma for a little while. Shaking Morris' hand, John stood back and let Conway go through her pre-flight check of the 302. He knew that pilots had their own systems they liked to go through before a flight—he was a pilot, too, and he knew that pilots, as a group, were superstitious types. They didn't advertise that fact, but it was, nonetheless, all too true.

A few minutes later Conway motioned for him to climb the mobile staircase up to the cockpit of the 302. "Take the forward seat, sir. From your record I doubt I'll have to retake control once you get a feel for her."

John nodded and got into the front seat, allowing a flight captain to help him with his helmet and the restraint system that was more complicated than he'd ever experienced before—he assumed it was because the alien hybrid part of the fighter made for some complications that weren't found on F-22 Raptors, which the X-302's most resembled. Once both he and Conway were strapped in the canopy was lowered and John started going through the in-plane pre-flight checklist, Captain Conway mentally checking off every step that John made.

All pre-flight checks complete, they began taxiing out of the hanger and Flight Control's no-nonsense representative began droning in John's ear over the radio in his helmet. Telling him he had a go for take-off, to use a certain runway, to avoid a certain vector, warning him about the potential weather problems he could run into at a certain altitude, and, finally, reminding him that his flight plan was clearly outlined on the screen in front of him—something that wasn't regular Air Force issue, at least it hadn't been the last time John was in a fighter jet, which, he had to admit, was at least six months before leaving for Atlantis nearly eleven months earlier—and that he was to stick to it without deviation.

Flying jets wasn't supposed to be like riding a bike. There was a reason pilots had to re-qualify regularly, why they constantly trained and ran simulations and drills and practised formations and attack vectors and everything they could possibly have to know if they found themselves in a combat situation, why the training was so rigorous, why the standards were so incredibly high for acceptance into any flight training program, let alone passing said program. And it had been a long time since John had flown jets. Being out of a cockpit for fifteen months was a lifetime for a pilot. And it wasn't like he had even really had to test his piloting abilities, his physical reaction time, while flying in Pegasus. The Puddle Jumpers required more directed thought patterns and less physical direction than anything the Milky Way had to offer. And the X-302's weren't exactly an assembly-line standardized ride to begin with.

Which, really, was what made it easier to figure everything out. No preconceived notions about what should be where, or how something should look. He'd read the manuals, the literature, and listened to Sam and the techs talk about the features, the Goa'uld 'improvements' and alterations. He'd sat through Conway's pre-flight, allowing her checklists to direct him to where everything was in reality as opposed to on a diagram or in a description given by memory. And, as always seemed to happen when he was put in front of a new flying machine, his intuition had kicked in, filling in the gaps, either with assumptions, educated though they may be, or simple rational thought about how, if he were designing a plane, it would be set up, because most pilots thought along the same lines when it came to that, and John knew that no plane or helo or anything was created without a team of actual pilots working with the techs and designers and everyone else involved to make sure that everything would work from a pilot's point of view. He'd done that once, briefly, recommended by a CO who knew he could fly anything and had mathematical skills beyond what most pilots had, which was saying something because math and flying went very much hand in hand, despite what some people might think. _Math and instincts_ one of John's earliest flight instructors had said, _math and instincts are all you need to survive in the air._ John could vaguely recall hearing that that instructor had gotten shot down by a Serbian MiG near the very end of the Bosnian conflict, cementing what John had always thought was the flaw in the man's logic. Math and instincts, for sure, but also skill and, oftentimes, dumb luck were what a pilot needed to survive. There were too many X-factors, really, to quantify exactly what a pilot needed to survive. But math and instincts and skill and luck would definitely be on the list, should one actually be compiled.

Taking off was easy. Get up to speed down the runway, pull the stick back with the right amount of pressure, continually check items A through N on mental list of things involved in properly taking off, climb to the elevation outlined in the flight plan that was staring him in the face, and level out once he reached that elevation. The alien parts of the jet didn't kick in until later, John knew, until he broke through the limits of Earth flight technology and entered the part of space that only a select few astronauts and cosmonauts and whatever else they went by in other countries had gone before.

"Ever dream of being an astronaut?" Conway asked.

"Never did much in the way of dreaming, full-stop," John admitted, "but no, not really an aspiration of mine."

"Me neither. And yet… this is what we're doing," Conway said.

"And yet," John agreed.

* * *

Landry hung up the red phone on his desk and sighed. "She's right. The reason that Elizabeth Weir was selected to lead the expedition is that she's liked and trusted by every single country in the alliance. And, since they trust her, they trust Major Sheppard and distrust you by extension," Landry said. Caldwell groaned loudly, his shoulders sagging. "Look, obviously you're not going to Atlantis. There is nothing that I can do about it right now. But the **Daedalus** does need a battle-ready Skipper and you've already proven yourself. You want the job, it's yours."

"Fine," Caldwell said, though it was clear that he was not happy about it.

* * *

"So did you save General O'Neill's life or something?" Conway asked as John got a feel for the 302's handling in low Earth orbit.

"Not really," John said honestly. The thing with the drone in Antarctica aside—and, really, that had been just as much about saving his own ass as the General's—his interaction with Jack O'Neill was limited to a few of the debriefs the General had attended, a few phone conversations regarding Elizabeth while she had been in DC, and one slightly awkward moment when he and Sam had been sparring in the SGC's gym and it had turned into more of a tickle fight than anything else and O'Neill had walked in on them prompting Sam to turn redder than he'd seen in years and leaving John to attempt to explain exactly why it was that he and Sam were acting so familiar with each other while, technically, on duty despite the fact that his duty station was in another galaxy. John got the impression that General Jack O'Neill wasn't quite sure what to make of him, but that the fact that Elizabeth was fighting for him meant something to the former leader of the legendary flagship team of the SGC. "Why?"

"Well, it's not every day Two-Stars in the E-ring make personal requests to push something through around here; at least outside the labs," Conway commented. "Your training wasn't scheduled to start for another week—a lot of us wondered why you were here so early—but the General called and ordered that someone get on it A-SAP."

John frowned. Elizabeth had been just as confused by the interminable delays as John, himself, was, but Landry had made it sound like his training was supposed to start right away when he sent him down to Nevada.

Something wasn't right in the state of Colorado, John mused, and he had a feeling it had something to do with the fact that he'd seen a few crew members he recognized from the **Daedalus** gathering up tools and spare-parts-ish things for the past few days.

"Huh. Guess I know who's gonna replace me," John muttered, his mind putting two and two together easily. Landry didn't like him, Caldwell was historically power-hungry and command of a massive base looked better on a resume than commander of what amounted to a Tender Ship making supply and mail runs between Atlantis and Earth, and the fact that he was just a Major, a Major with a questionable record and the death of the man whose job he currently held on his hands at that, made everything suddenly become perfectly clear. John wasn't sure what to do with the information about General O'Neill ordering his training pushed up immediately, but it did indicate that O'Neill, at least, was, if not on John's side, then at least wanted him to be at the SGC to maybe have a say in what happened to Atlantis once he was stripped of his command.

"What was that, sir?" Conway asked.

"Nothing," John replied. "Tell me about Antarctica," he said, hoping to distract himself from what was suddenly less of an abstract notion—a worst case scenario he felt obligated to point out to Elizabeth because, as much experience as she had in dealing with the military, she still didn't really understand the way it worked, the way the politics worked, though she would deny it to her dying breath, saying that she was the politician, not him, so she should know the way politics worked better than he did—and more of a very real probability: his removal from command on Atlantis. "I've read some basic reports, but, going by how it looked and felt from McMurdo, not to mention some of the casualties that came in after the fact; no written report could possibly cover it."

"That's the truth, sir," Conway agreed readily. "I've never seen anything like it. There's no reference I can think of to describe what that dogfight was like. I mean, I knew I'd end up in crazy-ass—uh… _alien_ situations when it got into the 302 program, but… Antarctica was… beyond everything even the training at Area 51 prepares you for."

Though he didn't care whether Conway said 'ass' or not in his presence, John noted her not-so-quick censoring of what seemed to be her normal speech patterns in front of him, a superior officer; it was something that was generally pushed aside on Atlantis. He knew he was a fairly relaxed commanding officer. He doubted the next guy would be the same, especially if he ended up being Caldwell. A lot of the unspoken rules would have to snap back to Earth military standard, fast, when the new sheriff came to town. That thought made John's gut clench painfully—the thought of someone else, someone like Caldwell who didn't understand Atlantis the way he did, being in charge of what, John knew, would end up being about half the expedition's personnel once all was said and done. Atlantis would rebel, John was almost certain of it. He loved the City dearly, but he knew she had a personality all her own, and it was one that could best be described as temperamental. In the first weeks, maybe even months, of their inhabitation of the City things had been rocky, not just because they were all such ingénues when it came to Atlantis, but because Atlantis didn't understand them, their motivations, their purposes, their emotions and needs. There was definitely a learning curve involved in dealing with the mythic City.

"I don't think it's even possible to train for something like that. It was just… act and react, act and react," Conway continued, unaware of the thoughts flying through John's head.

John smiled behind his mask. Everyone he'd talked to about the battle with Anubis—which he still couldn't really wrap his head around; Anubis was supposed to be some mythological thing, a fairy tale dealt with in a Literature course or a grade school report on Ancient Civilizations, not some half-Ascended Goa'uld-Ancient hybrid bent on galactic domination or whatever—over Antarctica had, in their own way, said basically the same thing.

You had to be there.

It wasn't like John didn't get that. The needing to experience something firsthand to fully understand it thing. He, better than most, knew what that meant. The whole first year on Atlantis—not even a year; ten months, eleven tops—was time he could never fully articulate to anyone who hadn't been there, who hadn't witnessed what he'd witnessed, who hadn't survived what he had survived. How could you hope to explain what it was like, watching a Wraith Queen literally suck the life out of your commanding officer with the touch of her hand to his chest? How could you explain the look in his eyes when he finally noticed you were there, begging you to take the shot, knowing it would kill him, because the end was what he was praying for, the alternative too agonizing to contemplate? How could you describe the desperation of people searching for a way to avoid being culled, the duplicity they were capable of to keep any tiny shred of hope to themselves, not necessarily because they wanted other planets to suffer the fate they were trying to avoid, but because they couldn't afford to care about people they'd never meet on planets they'd never go to, not when there were men and women and children all sharing a nightmare scenario that struck with generational regularity? How could you describe the Athosians, the mist things that made them think they'd gotten home, the Genii who were enemies that started as potential allies and were maybe once again potential allies after the bomb-trade Elizabeth brokered, the Manarians who were deep in the Genii's pocket and who gave Kolya the GDO and codes that allowed them to attempt the seizure of Atlantis during the storm, the kids on M7G-677 who killed themselves to control populations and sent their own children to other villages to ensure continued propagation, the Hoffans who had all but wiped themselves out with their wing-and-a-prayer miracle drug that ended up doing more damage than a culling could, the Daganians who double crossed them because of legends and beliefs that had all-but died out long ago on Earth, or about all the other cultures they'd encountered in their short time in the Pegasus Galaxy? How could you describe the visions brought on by the nanovirus before it caused your brain to suffer a fatal aneurysm or the images the Wraith were capable of making you see or the crushing feeling of guilt when you had to raise the shield over the Stargate causing at least forty men to simply cease to exist? There was just no way to properly convey what it was like. John got that.

The problem was, like his time on Atlantis was to the young Sergeant who had driven him from the SGC to his military transport, the battle over Antarctica had captured John's interest.

* * *

_So John's finally gotten in the air. I put this chapter off for as long as I could because I've been waiting to hear back from an ex who is a pilot about protocols for pre-flight checks and what the tower would say before and during take-off, and how casual I could get John and Conway to be conversationally while flying, but the trouble with ex-boyfriends is that they don't always return your calls in a timely manner, so... well, I watched a bunch of re-runs of uJAG/u and tried to keep away from the details that I'd planned this chapter to be filled with._

_The next chapter is almost finished, so it should be up in a few days._

_Please let me know what you think. Reviews are my ambrosia._

_Manic Penguin_


	19. Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

* * *

Once again on the phone, this time in the tiny office space she'd been handed when it became apparent her working out of the Briefing Room was going to make her and a lot of SG teams crazy. As if that wasn't a leap of logic that could have been taken the moment the President ordered that she return to Earth to do the debriefing thing personally instead of sending a proxy. She attributed the unusual burst of unpreparedness at the SGC to the fact that it was going through one heck of a regime change. Jack O'Neill had, literally, been with the program since the first mission, and the thought of him leaving, for good, was jarring to everyone who had known him since he had run SG-1. It jarred her, and she'd only really been his boss for a few days, not counting the time he spent in stasis, which she didn't, not really. To people like Walter Harriman, who had the SGC so wired he had, quite honestly, freaked Elizabeth out a bit when she'd been in charge, the change from Jack O'Neill, the SGC's favourite son, to Hank Landry, who had found out about the program one day on his front deck, had to be pretty intense. Especially since Elizabeth got the impression that, while Jack had known for a while he was going to be leaving, he hadn't advertised it until the last possible moment. That seemed like something Jack would do.

"He's going to hate that, General," Elizabeth said into the receiver.

_"Tough noogies,_" Jack said. Elizabeth rolled her eyes. He'd just had his promotion ceremony, been given his second star, and he still said things like 'tough noogies'. She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard that; probably back when she was in pigtails that hung down to her knees and went by 'Lizzie' and spent most of recess and lunch waiting in line for a turn on the tire swing in the playground of her school._ "You asked for a favour, I came through, and now I'm looking for reciprocity,"_ Jack continued, sounding more impatient than Elizabeth was used to him being with her.

Sure, he hadn't liked her that first day, when she came in, all disapproving of the leaps being taken by the military and so incredibly not George Hammond, but he'd been pretty focused on the fact that the Asgard weren't picking up their phones and that meant he was on a fairly short timetable for living the rest of his life while the knowledge of the Ancients filled his brain so far beyond capacity it would literally kill him, and he'd been short with pretty much everyone, frustrated by the fact that he couldn't find what they needed in the mess inside his head, frustrated that he was losing the ability to communicate, frustrated that his sacrifice was looking like it was going to be in vain, so Elizabeth hadn't exactly taken it personally. That moment, when she had been put in charge, hadn't been the optimum moment for a new boss to be sprung on everyone, though she doubted Kinsey had cared when he started the process that had led to Hammond being replaced with her, a civilian anti-military politician who, he thought, he could control to further his own agenda. Still, Jack had never snapped at her, had gotten angry around her, but never at her, and, while she knew she had asked a lot of him the last time they had spoken, Elizabeth got the distinct impression that there was more going on. The problem was, if Jack wasn't willing to offer it up on his own, she doubted she would find out what the something more was, especially not when all her connections in Washington were on the stale side after disappearing, literally, from the face of the Earth.

_"Sheppard has the whole gene thing wired. Do you know how long the migraines lasted when I had to control that thing? The Jumper? Yet you say he does it like it's nothing. The geeks at Area 51 have been begging for someone with that kind of control over the Ancient doodads and whatchmacallits and various rocks and crap they have there,"_ Jack continued.

"The headache was probably caused by the time travel component. John's never had to deal with something like that," Elizabeth tried. Not that John and Rodney hadn't tried to find the time machine after Elizabeth's older alternate timeline self had mentioned that the thing existed. Even though they knew it had been destroyed in the crash that killed the alternate Radek and John, both John and Rodney had been like kids trick-or-treating, going from lab to lab, searching for anything with Janus' name on it, anything that would indicate that Janus had left some of his research behind. He had, after all, apparently brought his research to the Milky Way with him, since a Jumper with a time machine component had been what had brought SG-1 to the past to get the ZPM that had gotten the 'Gate open to Atlantis to mount a rescue operation during the siege.

_"He's doing it, doc. Your simple favour? Not so simple. You're lucky I didn't hang myself with all the strings I had to pull."_

Elizabeth sighed softly. She'd known before she even asked that it was going to be nearly impossible for Jack to do what she wanted him to. Even if he had been in his position for months, years, it would have been nearly impossible for him to get her request pushed through, let alone in the twelve hours he'd managed in. The very thought of the kinds of deals Jack had to make was scary and mind-boggling and, honestly, Elizabeth hadn't thought he'd had it in him. Jack O'Neill was no politician, not by any stretch of the imagination. The thought of him surviving in Washington for long was, unfortunately, a little bit on the laughable side. Unfortunately, because, really, she didn't know anyone else who would be a better ally in Homeworld Security for the SGC and Atlantis than Jack. General Hammond had had his hands tied with the fact that the position was so new no one knew how far he could go, how much power to let him have, but over a year of the position being a reality, even a super top secret reality, had given a fairly decent definition to the parameters of the job, and, having read them over herself, she knew that Jack was perfect for the job. He understood all the facets, or, at least, almost all of the facets. He knew the field realities of Stargate travel. He knew the administrative realities of running the SGC. And, sure, he didn't exactly know the science parts, but, just from listening to him in meetings while she had been in DC, she knew that he understood a lot more than he liked to let on. Eight years with Samantha Carter and Daniel Jackson doing the science thing, from both ends of the spectrum, in his vicinity, under his command, had to have given him something of a basic understanding of some things, after all, and it wasn't like Jack was a dumb man. Still, Elizabeth wasn't sure how long Jack would last. Not just because he couldn't really do the politicking thing that was so necessary in Washington, but because he'd been ready for retirement for so many years, had actually retired for a time at least once that Elizabeth could recall, and what amounted to a desk job wasn't going to keep him around for long. Which was unfortunate, but it was still a reality.

"I know. I asked for something pretty much impossible and you came through for me, beyond what I had even dared hope for. But, in my defence, I never said it was a _simple_ favour. I just said it was a favour."

_"Not much of a defence,"_ Jack muttered. _"But that's not the point. The point is, Sheppard is already at Area 51, he's scheduled to be there for another two weeks at least, he's already finished qualifying on the 302's, and locking him in a mountain with Caldwell and Landry right now is like begging for a Court Marshal. Get him to spend a few days, a week, maybe, doing the lab rat thing, and when he gets back to the Mountain some other thing has happened to take the focus off him and his shiny new starbursts."_

Elizabeth sat back in her chair, cringing as the metal launched a pained protest to the angle she was attempting to reach. "How far back did I set you with all this, Jack? Really?"

_"Well, my political capital is less than deep in the black. But I've never liked doing things the easy way,"/i_ Jack said. He let out a rather pained sigh. _i"More accurately I've never been given the chance to do things the easy way. But why start now, right?"_

"Jack—" Elizabeth started only to be cut off by the General.

_"I'm not hunting for pity, Elizabeth__. That's not who I am. It'll be rough, for a while, but it's not like I haven't scraped by on charm and wit before,"_ Jack said, infusing his voice with a jocular tone that Elizabeth knew he just wasn't feeling up for at that moment. _"Tell Sheppard he's pulled guinea pig duty. Someone'll call you when his promotion becomes official."_ he said before uttering a quick goodbye and hanging up.

As Elizabeth hung up the phone her eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. She was supposed to be in on a conference call with the President in Landry's office in five minutes. Telling herself that she hadn't chosen the time for the call, and that five minutes was not enough time to deal with how upset John was going to get over finding out he was going to be a guinea pig for the scientists at Area 51 instead of coming back to Colorado like he thought, Elizabeth left the office she'd been stuck in for the past few hours. She wasn't avoiding the call, she told herself. She wasn't avoiding it; she was waiting until she had the time to deal with whatever fallout there might be.

She knew she was lying to herself, though. If it was anyone else, anyone other than John Sheppard, she would have made the call, given the order, and gone to the conference call and be done with it.

With John it was different.

With John everything was different.

And Elizabeth was just starting to understand just how different everything was when it came to John.

After the initial flight, John got two more flights in before he was officially qualified on the 302's. Normally training would be much more rigorous, both because it was a very new ride for John, and because it had been so long since he had actually flown a jet, but there was, really, nothing normal about the circumstances, so John figured it wasn't so strange that everything was so accelerated.

General O'Neill, apparently, had done more than make a call to get John in a cockpit sooner rather than later. He'd also passed along the story of the helo and the drone, even going so far as to omit the fact that John hadn't gone left when O'Neill said left, that he had gone right, pulled a fake-out on the drone, and then gone left. Apparently anyone who got flight recommendations from Jack O'Neill didn't have to jump through as many hoops as were generally required to pass their quals. It was strange, a man John didn't know, a man John got the distinct impression didn't like him beyond the fact that he'd saved both their lives that one time, a man whose name always seemed to be uttered either with the kind of quiet reverence given to the truest of true heroes or with the kind of contempt that John wasn't entirely unfamiliar with; it was strange that Jack O'Neill was doing so much to get John pushed through a process that was created to be un-push-through-able. And, while John wasn't about to question it aloud, that didn't mean he wasn't questioning it silently, repeatedly, with increasing frequency.

John couldn't help but wonder when the other shoe was going to drop.

All his life he'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Mom's sick; other shoe drops and she's dead and John's out of the house because his sisters are long gone and his father is an ass.

Married to Nancy; other shoe drops and she disappears when he needs her during his Article 32 hearing; and then the other-other shoe drops—because their marriage was so messed up it had three metaphorical feet that dropped footwear—he's cleared, given only a black mark on his record that he can, conceivably, work off, and he comes home to celebrate with his wife and the furniture is gone, all but the wooden kitchen table, the wooden kitchen table that had a light shining down on it, illuminating the divorce papers, a sticky-note on top giving John her lawyer's number, and asking him to find a lawyer himself, read everything over, and sign as soon as possible.

Fly to the middle of nowhere in Antarctica; other shoe drops and aliens exist, the test flight crash from a few months earlier was a massive battle with a thing that was half Ascended and half Goa'uld and completely intent upon destroying Earth since he knew he couldn't take over without wiping everyone out and, oh yeah, someone is trying to kill him with an Ancient Drone they know nothing about and somehow activated.

Listen to some Scottish doctor ramble nervously about Stargates and Ancients and special genes that activate technology; other shoe drops, the 'really quite slim' chance of him having the gene is a lot less than slim—he's got the most capability of controlling Ancient technology anyone has ever seen.

John was waiting for a lot of shoes to drop at that particular moment.

Being the military commander of Atlantis; it was only a matter of time before he got that job ripped away from him.

Living on Atlantis itself; with so much progress being made on the ATA gene therapy, and the fact that more and more people had been discovered to have the gene, even within the SGC itself, it could be decided that someone with his record wasn't wanted on such an important mission any longer.

Someone going out of their way to get him pushed through training and qualifications when other forces were trying to keep him in Nevada, for whatever reason, for weeks before his training was due to begin; he didn't know what potential other shoe could drop there, but he knew that one was going to, and he really hoped he was prepared for when it did.

John found himself approaching everything tactically, something he rarely did unless he was off-world or in the middle of something like the Genii incursion during the storm. It was driving him completely insane.

For once he just wanted the other shoe to drop already.

Landry was late, dealing with another SG team down in the science labs according to Walter, so Elizabeth had settled herself in one of the briefing room chairs to wait. The SGC had never been her home base, not really; even when she'd been in charge she had never felt all that comfortable within the depths of the mountain. There was far too much cement and steel and re-circulated air and not enough daylight and freedom for her liking. Before she arrived on Atlantis, though, Elizabeth had never really had a true home base, not her childhood home, not the boarding school campus, not her townhouse in DC or the two-storey fixer-upper with the great garden she'd purchased when she moved to Colorado. Part of that, Elizabeth knew, was due to the fact that, until Atlantis, she had never really spent a lot of time in one place, other than the boarding school, but that hadn't been what anyone would consider a home; she spent so much of her life travelling, staying in hotels or on military bases or tents or whatever was necessary for that particular job, sleeping on planes and carrying her life with her in a laptop case and a carry-on rolling suitcase, she had never stayed in one place long enough to really feel like she could call it home. And, like everywhere else before Atlantis, the SGC felt just as strange, as unwelcoming, as any hotel, motel, military base, tent, freezing alcove in the middle of Antarctica, ever did. Except it didn't, because the SGC was familiar in a way that, excluding Atlantis, nowhere else had ever been.

The SGC was familiar, at least in the way that she understood how everything worked. She knew the protocols for teams leaving, for teams arriving. She knew the sound of the Iris closing and Walter's voice announcing whose IDC was coming through, or which chevron was engaged or locked. She knew the hum of the fluorescents and the steady clomp-clomp-clomp of military issue boots on painted cement. She knew the way the files in storage were sorted and how to pull up more recent reports on the computer. She knew the combo to the safe in Landry's office, since it hadn't been replaced since General West had sat there, so she knew that at least six people knew the combo as well—General West, General Hammond, both retired, General Bauer, dishonerably discharged after the reckless order he'd given that had nearly destroyed the SGC and would have eventually destroyed the entire planet, Elizabeth herself, Jack, and now Landry—and she knew the way her wrist and fingers would twist and turn, three to the right to 46, two to the left to 92, then straight to 3, before the safe clicked and her hand moved to the handle. She knew that Walter was alarmingly efficient, and that everyone loved the short bespeckled airman, enough so that he was constantly finding himself being promoted to a higher rank. She knew that each SG team was a family in and of itself, and that all the SG teams, together, were a big extended family. She knew that the main elevator's number '26' button no longer actually had the numerals on it, as it was the level with the Stargate on it, and it was the button that was most often pressed with more pressure than was strictly required. She knew that the briefing room table was a few heavy file boxes and a bad day away from disintegrating completely, and that the carpet carried blood and coffee and mud and god-knew-what-else stains from over eight years of off-world missions and briefings and debriefings. She knew that the third bed from the main doors of the Infirmary had a light over it that drove every patient crazy and therefore was rarely utilized. She knew that the microphone in the observation room overlooking Isolation 6 was constantly getting stuck on VOX, and that down on the bottom-most level of the SGC there was a room with eighty bunk beds, sans mattresses, that had been moved down there when all the bunker rooms (that had been outfitted with the metal bunk beds for visitors and exhausted SGC personnel in the early days) had been transformed into VIP suites and office spaces once the Program survived its first few shut-down attempts. She knew that in what had once been Jack's office, when he was still leader of SG-1, there was a "Goa'uld family tree", with a line through the names of all the System Lords they had killed, and she knew that the name 'Apohpis' was written and crossed out multiple times, each with increasing frustration evident in the re-writing, and that, the final copy of the name had a big smiley face and a bunch of stars beside it, along with the words 'for sure this time' in Jack's chickenscratch—and she knew, since she had stopped in there since getting back to Earth, to see Jack's old office and to, she had to admit, see the mural, that it was still there, though there were new names on the 'family tree' that she didn't recognize, and new ones crossed out, as well (apparently Lord Yu was no more, as well as Amatarasu, both of whom Elizabeth had dealt with in her tenure at the SGC) and other enemies had been chronicled on the other walls, in other people's handwriting, some crossed out, some not, like a thought web from a high school writing course, with ideas discounted along the way while new ones were added as they came up. She knew that the red phone in what was now Landry's office had been part of General Hammond's sense of humour, and that its colour had no special powers like the mythical red phone during the Cold War, though the number that showed up on the caller ID did.

Elizabeth knew details about the SGC that she could never hope to learn about a house on Witches Way in Colorado Springs or a townhouse in Georgetown, DC, because her life was her work, and, while she had lived in Colorado Springs, she had lived more at the SGC than at the house, and while she had lived in DC she had spent more time out of the country doing jobs for the UN, then, later, she had spent eighteen hours a day, minimum, on the Georgetown campus, keeping longer office hours than any other staff member that she was aware of, enjoying the atmosphere of the university campus, the mixture of irreverence and dedication most students entered her lectures with, the completely valid and sweetly naïve questions they would ask her, the potential future leaders of the country that sat in uncomfortable seats to hear her expound on politics and the science behind it; taking the creation of laws to a place beyond _Schoolhouse Rock_ but not getting into the real sausage-making, picking apart international treaties to delve into the minutia that she had always found so intriguing. She knew the SGC the way she knew the halls of Georgetown's poly-sci building, the way she knew the different floors and people who worked in the UN building in New York, the way she knew so much and yet so little about her true home, Atlantis.

The Briefing Room was a familiar home-base for Elizabeth. She had had so many files to read and things to take care of while she had been in charge of the SGC that she had usually left the office and gone to the Briefing Room to spread out and set things up in a particular order, only moving into the office on a more permanent basis in the weeks just before she was given command of the project in Antarctica.

Once upon a time the Briefing Room was a sort of sanctuary for Elizabeth, which was strange considering it was a fairly high-traffic area that was open to anyone cleared to enter the SGC proper, and it was certainly wasn't a place that there was an unspoken 'do not disturb' sign hanging on the door like there was when she was on the balcony outside the Control Room of Atlantis, but, like Daniel had said when they first met, the Briefing Room did offer the best view in the house. She couldn't quite get past the fact that the Stargate's chevrons were red instead of turquoise, or that there was an inner ring that turned while dialling instead of a series of lights turning on and off in a simulation of a turning inner ring, but it was still a pretty amazing view, and it reminded her of home. And the Briefing Room's oppressive quality from earlier, when she was so sick of the room from the endless debriefings, though her little office was getting that 'shrinking room' feel to it, so, while she knew she could have gone back to the hole in the wall that was her temporary office and call John and make him aware of the fact that he had been conscripted to lab duty, Elizabeth had opted to wait for Landry to wrap up with the SG team down in the labs to avoid delaying the conference call with the President any longer.

"So you got John promoted," Sam said as she perched herself on the edge of the Briefing Room table facing Elizabeth. Elizabeth jumped, not having heard or seen the blonde Colonel enter the room.

"He earned it. I just… made sure I wouldn't have to deal with Steven Caldwell as my Second In Command," Elizabeth shrugged, though she didn't know why she was defending John's promotion to Sam, of all people, who was probably the only other person in the Mountain who would fight tooth and nail for John Sheppard. Well, Rodney and Carson would, but Carson was still in Scotland, and Elizabeth hadn't seen Rodney (though she hadn't actually tried seeking him out; she just hadn't run into him) for a few days. "Besides, you and I both know that, with his record, John was never going to make Lieutenant Colonel without someone giving the Powers That Be a…"

"Swift kick in the ass?" Sam teased.

"So to speak," Elizabeth smiled. "How did you find out? I just got confirmation tw minutes ago." Though she had talked to Jack, he hadn't been able to say for sure that he had been successful in getting John his promotion. Though he had hinted, heavily, toward it being an all-but done deal, he had admitted that he didn't know for sure, just that he was going by his gut. Which had been more than enough for Elizabeth. But on her way up to the Briefing Room her phone had gone off, and Major Davis, who she had worked with a few times, even before becoming embroiled with the SGC, had called and confirmed that John's promotion would go through by the end of the week. Which was just as well, since that was about how long Jack wanted John to stay and play guinea pig in Nevada.

"I ran into Walter in the elevator. He let me know," Sam said. Neither woman questioned how the 'Gate technician had found out that John's promotion was official. It was just accepted that Walter Harriman knew everything there was to know in the SGC, and he usually knew it at least half an hour before anyone else. "How are you gonna tell him? John, I mean."

That was the problem. In all the hoping that her plan—Hail Mary play, to use one of John's football idioms—would work, she hadn't once considered how to break the news to John. And, as his CO, it was, technically, her job. She could pass it off to Landry or Jack, but it felt like it was something she had to tell him herself, not let a total stranger, or a man who might as well have been a stranger for all the time they'd spent together, give him what was some of the biggest news he'd ever hear. She only had one idea, and it sounded incredibly stupid, even in her own head, though the words 'then promote him' had sounded incredibly stupid in her head, and coming out of her mouth, and they'd worked out incredibly well, so she wasn't sure if her brain's judge of incredibly stupid was skewed or if she just wasn't thinking straight anymore. "I don't know. I was considering sort of… not."

"Not? What, just wait for him to ask why his pay cheque suddenly got bigger?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "More like a surprise."

"A… surprise promotion ceremony?" Sam asked sceptically.

"With less emphasis on the ceremony part, because, well, it's John and he hates that kind of thing," Elizabeth nodded.

Sam thought about that for a minute, rolled the idea over in her head, before shrugging. "General Hammond sprung my promotion to Major on me. And General O'Neill threw me for a loop with the whole 'Lieutenant Colonel' thing. It's not like surprise promotions are unheard of. Technically we're not supposed to know if our names are being seriously considered for promotion, let alone accelerated promotion," Sam said thoughtfully. She shrugged again. "You could do it. Surprise John. And I agree on the downplaying of the ceremony stuff. John's never been good at dealing with attention like that. Though he might hate you for surprising him anyway; he's never really liked surprises."

"Well, the more pressing issue is that General O'Neill had to pull a lot of strings to get all this happening, and one of the things he promised in return is that someone from Atlantis would hang out at Area 51 for a few days and play ATA guinea pig. And I made a vow to Carson that I wouldn't make him go through that—he hates that he has the gene, is terrified of what happens when he goes near most of the things we've found in the City; especially the Chair. And… well, I doubt Rodney would be able to withstand taking control of everything, so… that leaves John," Elizabeth said.

"Yeah, he's gonna hate that even more than the surprise party thing," Sam said.

Elizabeth nodded. "That I already knew."

_Okay, so this chapter was supposed to be out earlier, this past weekend, but I wanted to be able to post on my birthday and the next chapter didn't want to come out properly in time, so I left this one banked on my harddrive to wait, in case Chapter 20 didn't find completion. Which it hasn't, which sucks, because this chapter really wasn't the one I wanted to share with my readers for my birthday. The next chapter sets up a lot of things, though, so I want to make sure it's done right before I post it anywhere._

_Anyway, let's recap._

_Jack got John's promotion pushed through for Elizabeth, but now John has to do the ATA guinea pig thing at Area 51, which is something I've always sort of had a picture in my head of him doing while they were back on Earth, though the actual episode didn't give any indication that it happened. Well, this is my world, or my version of their world, so John is doing the guinea pig thing._

_Elizabeth and Sam are going to surprise him with the promotion, because I kinda loved that Sam never saw her promotions coming and, with his record, John wouldn't be on the usual promotion track so it wouldn't be an expected thing after X years of service and whatever. Plus, in the episode, it was two months that they were away from Atlantis, and a month back from the first scene to when John was promoted, and he was a Colonel when he talked to Ford's cousin but not when they were trying to replace him with Caldwell, so I'm trying to keep things even and on track according to the episode's timeline, which isn't the easiest thing since the episode was all flashbacky and whatever._

_If Jack seemed not himself... well, just chalk that up to him regretting taking a desk job in DC or whatever. I've never been able to really captire RDA's tone and everything properly, and having him talking on the phone is even harder than writing him in, say, a mission sequence. Also, forgive the 'tough noogies' thing. That just always struck me as something Jack would say, though I can't remember if he ever actually did. I doubt it. But whatever... my world, and all that._

_The "Goa'uld Family Tree" thing was something Mel offered up, something she did on the back of a spiral notebook one day, back before she had even convinced me to tune in to SG-1. She had this elaborate thing all laid out, names of the System Lords, their meaning in Earth cultures, episodes they were encountered in, episodes they were just mentioned or referred to in, and the episode that they finally died in. There was a lot of instances of 'Apophis' being written, then scratched out, and each time it had to be rewritten it was done with a little more force and a clear frustration, given how hard she pressed the ballpoint to the cardboardy back page thing. Since we never saw Jack's office (with the desk that he denied knowing he had when he got his promtion) I decided that Mel's slightly obsessive famly tree thing was something I could work in here._

_Just a final note. I love Gary Jones AKA Walter Harriman. I think he's hilarious as Walter, and doing his stand-up, and I can't resist the compulsion to include him in my stories, even if I just mention him. He was in the pilot of **SG-1**, has appeared in over half the episodes of the ten seasons, and has been in a bunch of **Atlantis** episodes, too, and probably will continue to be, since he's probably easier to book, not to mention cheaper, than Beau Bridges, and, well, there's not much about Gary Jones that Stargate viewers don't associate with the SGC. Which is great, because, as I've said, I love Gary Jones. Anyway, all this blathering has been my way of saying that, no, you're not insane thinking that there's a lot of Harriman references in my chapters, and, yes, a lot of the main characters think about him from time to time. But I figure, he was around when Elizabeth ran the SGC, so she knows about "the disconnected voice of the little Sergeant with psychic powers", to quote Landry in 901, and being back at the SGC is bringing up memories, most of which I've made up, but what the hell. My world._

_Anyway, that's my babbling end-note. Thank you to everyone still reading this, and massively huge hugs and kisses to anyone who takes the time to shoot me a review because they totally make this big goofy smile thing happen to my face and sometimes there aren't enough things in life to smile about. Which is a rather maudlin thought, so I'll stop writing now because, wow, this is going to a depressing place._

_Happy belated Canada Day!_

_Manic Penguin_


	20. Chapter 20

**_CHAPTER 20_**

* * *

_AN: Note the new lower rating; this is the 14-A version of this chapter. The full adult content will appear on COMMAND DYNAMICS and my personal web site for those who want the full chapter. While not exactly innocent, this chapter complies with ffn's regs._

* * *

The knock on his door had been unexpected, but, when John saw the smiling face of the knocker he decided that the interruption from sleep was well worth it.

"Elizabeth, what are you doing here?" John asked as he waved her into the small room he'd been staying in since arriving at Nellis.

Without a word Elizabeth entered the room and shrugged out of her blazer, revealing a tiny lacy tank top in an extremely becoming emerald green. She kicked the door closed with the heel of her left shoe while hooking her thumbs into the waistband of her skirt, sliding them slowly around to the back, her lithe fingers undoing the button and sliding the zipper down until the formerly well-fitting skirt became too heavy to stay on her slim hips, falling to the floor with her blazer in a heap of black with light grey pinstripes, easily stepped out of as she moved deeper into the room.

"Elizabeth?" John choked. Elizabeth, the leader of Atlantis, his boss, was in his room, in a tiny lacy green tank top and silky black panties, high black fuck-me heels, and eyes dark with something John refused to quantify, and it threw him. Because Elizabeth didn't wear lacy tank tops, she rarely wore anything other than her uniform red, he had spent a lot of time and energy not imagining what kind of panties she preferred, and he'd only seen her in heels a few times but they'd always been lower sensible ones half-hidden by pantsuits not the four-inch torture devices that were making her legs look like they were fifty feet long. And her eyes… he knew the look she had in them. Hunger, lust, need; all things primal and not at all in keeping with the prim and proper, though at times amusingly irreverent, Doctor Elizabeth Weir. "What's going on?" John asked shakily.

"If you have to ask I'm not doing it right," Elizabeth purred, crossing her arms over her belly, grasping the hem of her top between her fingertips and pulling up, the silk sliding up and revealing skin, more skin than he'd seen even the one time he'd managed to get her to join him in teaching the Athosian kids to swim. She pulled the top over her head and let it slip from her fingertips, the silk fluttering to the floor like a leaf, and then Elizabeth was standing in front of him wearing nothing but a pair of panties and fuck-me heels. "You're wearing too much," she decided after a pause, then she took another step forward and her fingers grasped the hem of his tee shirt and began pulling it upwards and John felt all the oxygen in the room vanish.

Stunned stupid, John didn't fight it when Elizabeth raised the shirt up over his head, even lifting his arms to aid her in divesting him of the soft cotton, though his unblinking eyes made it clear that he wasn't entirely there. Or, rather, he was there, but on overload from the visual stimuli that so much naked Elizabeth provided. The shirt fell from her grasp as her fingers moved to the lazily tied bow holding his flannel pyjama pants on his hips. She pulled at one of the loose ends of the bow, the excessively long string straightening as the bow came unlooped and the wash-worn soft flannel slipped an inch lower on his hips before catching on his pubic bone.

Elizabeth slid her fingers along to rest on his hips, the tips of her fingers sliding under the waistband of his pants. "This will be more fun if you play along," she said, inching forward until her breasts were brushing his chest. She licked her lips, and, whether it was an unconscious motion or another step in her seduction, John didn't care. Because all he knew in that moment was that he had to know what it felt like to touch her lips.

"This can't be a game, Elizabeth," John said, every ounce of self control he had left holding him back from throwing his almost-naked boss down on the uncomfortable BOQ bed and taking control of the situation.

"Who's playing?" Elizabeth whispered before closing the space between their lips, one of her hands leaving his waist and sliding into his hair while the other slid around to the small of John's back, pressing his body against hers as she ground herself against his groin.

* * *

Turning her face into the pelting spray Elizabeth stood still, a long day of meetings and avoidance causing tension in muscles that hadn't been tense since before she left Earth.

"Bureaucratic-bullshit induced tension," Elizabeth grumbled through the rumble of the water.

Her head, which had been pounding so hard she had foregone an invitation to join SG-1 for dinner at some restaurant in town, was feeling much better, half an hour post a dose of Advil and a litre of cool water, but every other inch of her body ached in a nearly-screaming way that didn't speak of a day spent hiking or swimming or anything else active and fun and even remotely pleasurable, but, rather, a day of stop and start meetings, rushing to a room then sitting until her muscles were past cooled then rushing to another room to repeat the process.

She'd been spoilt, she supposed, being the leader in Atlantis. Unless she was checking up on progress in one of the labs, or decided, herself, that she needed to stretch her legs, all meetings were held either in her own office, or the large Conference Room with louvered doors which was barely any distance from her office, or the Control Room, which was right across the bridge from her office. She made a vow, then and there, to get off her ass more often. Maybe go off-world a few times, if John okayed it, because he, technically, had to, being—_still_, thank any deity that was listening—the military commander of the base; one of the parts of John's job description was protecting Elizabeth, something he often did to an extent that Elizabeth considered to be overkill, but she was still alive and John was a lot less tense now that he knew she would follow his directions to the letter while they were off-world.

All work-related thoughts fled her mind when the slightly dingy opaque plastic shower curtain was pulled back, and another person joined her in the shower, pressing her back against the cool, slick tile as he pressed his lips to hers, one hand tangling in her soaking wet curls, the other hand resting low on her hip, his body so close to hers that she could feel the coarse hair between his pectorals rubbing tantalizingly against her breasts, could feel his arousal pressing against her belly. Instinctively her arms slid around his shoulders, one hand sliding up into the untameable dark hair, tangling her fingers in the strands while the mist off the shower drifted down over them, the other hand sliding up and down his back slowly, revelling in the feel of hard muscle and soft skin and, when she pressed a little harder, rib bones and his spine.

"What are you doing here? I thought you were still in Nevada," Elizabeth gasped as he tore his lips from hers and began nipping and sucking a trail down along her jaw and back toward her ear.

"Had to see you," John said, his voice rumbling in her ear, not over a radio headset, like she was used to, with tiny distortions and miles or, sometimes, lightyears, between them. His lips brushed the shell of her ear as he spoke, undistorted, low and rumbling and so devastatingly sexy that Elizabeth felt her knees do a liquefying thing she thought only happened in trashy romance novels and overwrought teenage dramas on primetime television.

* * *

In two different states the two leaders of the not-so-mythic No-Longer-Lost City of Atlantis bolted upright in their beds, respiration heavy, bodies dazed by the arousal thrumming through their systems.

* * *

_Okay, wow, this chapter took a long time to get out. The sad thing is that it's been sitting on my harddrive for months and I've been working on following chapters, thinking I had already posted this. Sorry everyone._

_Anyway, Vancouver's been attacked by over two feet of snow (we usually get less than an inch a year) and I've been trapped in my house with my visiting parents, my 91 year old grandmother, my younger sister, and her boyfriend, along with two dogs and my rabbit, for the past two weeks and, to keep from going insane with family-overtime I decided to clean up my harddrive. That's how I discovered I hadn't posted this chapter yet._

_Now, obviously, the sex-dream thing has been done a million times before, but, really, I've got John and Elizabeth in two different states, and I need to keep them that way for the time being, but there's only so many times they can talk to each other on the phone before even I lose interest in the story._

_Fair warning, a some of the next chapters will be Elizabeth/Simon. As soon as I regain control of my living room and the DVD player I'll pop in RISING, HOME, and INTRUDER to make sure I have Garwin Sanford's/Simon's meter and vocabulary down. I wrote the chapters while watching SG-1's ENIGMA, PRETENSE, and BETWEEN TWO FIRES, and am only just realizing that those are Narim, not Simon, and, other than Sanford himself, there is very little the two characters have in common, including the way they talk/act/react and so forth._

_Happy holidays, happy New Year, et cetera, et cetera..._

_Until next time_

_Manic Penguin_


End file.
